


You want me to act like we've never kissed

by withdiamonds



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:17:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withdiamonds/pseuds/withdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amnesia ahead! It's 2015, and Sam and Dean are settled in a small town in Ohio. They're doing just fine, with only the occasional nightmares about Hell to bother them. There's even a ghost to hunt now and again, and while they're pretty much alone in the world, at least they have each other - until an accident threatens to take even that away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You want me to act like we've never kissed

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to topaz, as always. She talked me off the ledge with this thing about ten times since I started it in FEBRUARY. It still wouldn't have an ending if not for her. She made it all so much better. Title is from Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces." 
> 
> This was written for the samdean_otp MiniBang.

Sam finished wiping his hands and spread the dishtowel out on the countertop to dry in the afternoon sun. He looked around the kitchen with satisfaction, savoring the feeling of a simple job well done. 

He frowned. A clump of dog hair lurked under the table, taunting him. Where the hell had that come from, and how had he missed it? He reached for the broom.

"Sammy?" Sam propped the broom back against the wall and smiled. Busy with his quest for wayward dog hair, he hadn't heard the Impala rumble up the driveway. "Hey, Sam, a little help here?" Dean yelled.

Sam poked his head out of the kitchen door and watched appreciatively as Dean hefted a bag of dog food up on his shoulder, grabbed a six-pack of beer with his other hand, and shut the car door with his hip.

"Sam!" Dean bellowed again.

"Hold your horses," Sam yelled back as he came out onto the back stoop and grinned at his brother. 

"Dude, I only have two hands," Dean said, trying to keep the dog food steady without dropping the beer as Sam came down the steps toward him.

"Good thing. If you had more than two, that'd be weird, and I might have to shoot you," Sam said, reaching Dean and pulling the bag of food off his shoulder, hefting it onto his own.

"Funny man," Dean said. He shifted the beer and opened the trunk, pulling out a couple of bags of groceries, fisting the plastic in his free hand. "I got that pink cranberry shit you like to drink," he said, thrusting the bags at Sam.

Sam ignored him and turned toward the house. He followed Dean up the porch steps, reaching around him to open the kitchen door. Ushering Dean inside, he lowered the dog food to the floor. 

Daisy came tearing into the kitchen, drawn either by the sound of Dean's voice or the sound of the dog food hitting the deck. Really, it could have gone either way.

She was a pit bull mix, maybe with some Lab in her. It was hard to tell. Dean had found her trotting along the side of the road two years ago, dirty and hungry, one ear half-torn off. To hear Dean tell it, Daisy had sidled right up to him when he stopped the car, full of peace, love, and understanding.

The fact that she'd growled at Sam for almost a week after Dean brought her home was something Dean seemed to think the most hilarious thing ever, and such was the state of Dean's psyche at the time that Sam never called him on the bite marks all over Dean's own hands. Dean had quickly thrust them in his pockets, smirking as Sam backed away from a snarling Daisy and retreated into the house to dig the leftover steak bones from last night's supper out of the trash.

Daisy hadn't been impressed with Sam's peace offering, just like she hadn't been impressed with Sam, period. It was kind of disheartening, considering how much Sam loved dogs, but she'd come around after awhile. It was hard to stay mad at the person who fed you everyday, after all.

Not to mention, if Dean were a dog, he'd be Daisy. Leave it to Dean to find a dog who exhibited the exact same personality traits he'd been showing all his life. And if there was one thing Sam was an expert at, it was handling Dean. That made Daisy a piece of cake.

"Smells good in here, Sammy," Dean said now, sniffing the air with appreciation. He nodded at the stove, where Sam was making chili.

"It'll be ready in about half an hour," Sam said. He paused then casually added, "How was work?" 

Neither of them was fooled by his tone. _How's work_ was code for _did you manage to get through the day without drinking enough that your co-workers noticed?_

"It was fine," Dean said tightly. 

That meant _yes, I managed, and also, get the hell off my back._

Sam nodded and left it at that.

Dean bent to untie his work boots, his face hidden.

Sam turned back to the stove, lifting the lid off the pot and stirring the chili. The steam made his eyes water.

I'm just gonna go –" Dean gestured toward the stairs, standing there in his sock feet, covered with the grime of his day. Construction suited him; Sam had always thought so. It kept Dean in shape, kept his muscles strong and his belly flat.

"Need any help?" Sam waggled his eyebrows in a great imitation of Dean, actually, perfectly capturing the salacious spin Dean could put on the most innocuous things. "Wash your back for you, sailor?" He felt ridiculous, but it was important to make the effort.

Dean studied him for a moment and then smiled wickedly, a smile that chased the dark shadows from his eyes.

Sam was in favor of anything that could erase those shadows, however temporarily – that was one of the reasons he had worked so hard to make friends with Daisy. He turned the flame under the chili to low and smiled back.

Dean held out his hand. "Let's go, hotshot."

*

The chili tasted all the better for the extra time on the stove, but Sam wouldn't have cared if it had cooked away to a lump of charcoal. 

It was mid-February and colder than fuck. Dad would have said it was colder than a well-digger's ass, which Sam had never understood. He guessed it was one of those folksy sayings people passed down through the years and remembered long after they'd lost their meaning.

But while it was cold outside, the shower was hot, and Dean was warm and sleek in Sam's arms. Sam sucked on the sensitive skin behind Dean's ear, while Dean moaned and reached between them for Sam's dick. 

Sam tightened his arms around Dean's waist, sliding one hand down over his ass, letting his fingers rub over Dean's asshole.

Dean gasped and shoved Sam backwards. "Dude, give me some room, here," he demanded.

Sam canted his hips back without letting go of anything important and closed his eyes when Dean managed to get his hand around them both, rubbing their cocks together and stoking them in his strong grasp.

It didn't take long for either of them to come, and Sam decided the chili could wait just a little longer while he kissed Dean breathless under the nice hot water.

*

Central Ohio seemed an unlikely spot for the Winchester brothers to end up. There was no saying it was permanent – who knew what weird shit might come up that would make them have to pack up and take off.

But they'd been here for three years, and Sam thought it would have to be something pretty spectacular to get them to budge, Dean especially.

They were surprisingly content.

Mostly. 

The gates of Hell had been sealed, which drastically cut down on the number of demons trying to fuck with them. Like, pretty much zero at this point.

Oh, sure, there were still a few ghosts hanging around, but not as many as one would think these days. Sam didn't know if it was because Cas was back up in Heaven throwing his weight around, or what. 

He didn't much care, really. Whatever it was that had brought them to this relative peace, Sam was more grateful than curious. He had lost the need to know things. After having completely given up on normal, he actually managed to attain it, or at least a certain definition of the word.

Sam kept himself busy doing online consulting work for a college professor or two, a handful of authors, whoever needed his services, really. 

And Dean worked construction and hung out at the local garage. He carried more guilt than Sam thought he should, about pretty much everybody he had ever met and then lost. But he had friends now, friends he wasn't afraid he was going to lose.

They had an honest-to-god once a week poker night with Ron and Emmitt, Dean's boss and the chief of police, respectively.

It was a life neither of them ever thought to have, and some days Sam believed in the reality of it more than others.

There were nightmares, of course. There were so many things for them to have nightmares about that it was inevitable.

But they got through them. Sometimes Dean drank more than he should, and he had black moods when he refused to speak to anyone, including Daisy. There was too much accumulated guilt and grief for it to be otherwise.

Sam might have developed a slight tendency to be ODC about the house, but he would unequivocally deny Dean's assertion that he'd always been that way. There was nothing wrong with exerting a little control over their surroundings.

All in all, it was more than Sam had ever expected. And he honestly wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop.

*

Sam looked up from his book when he heard Daisy whine. Shaking his head, he blinked away the feeling of coming up for air from the bottom of a deep lake. It was a feeling he got sometimes when he became completely absorbed in whatever he was reading.

He looked around the living room, focusing on the familiar shape of the bookcase that Dean had made leaning against the wall, and the second-hand recliner Sam picked up at the rummage sale the local Presbyterian church had every spring, re-acclimating himself to his surroundings. 

It used to happen when he was a kid, too. Dean would poke him in the ribs, or flick the back of his head, impatient for Sam's attention. Sam would blink at him, trying to focus, while Dean laughed at him.

"Where'd you go, huh, Sammy?" He'd snatch the book from Sam's hands, holding it out of his reach while Sam hissed "Give it back, Dean!" and Dad growled, "Knock it off, you two," from the front seat.

Sam associated the feeling with safety, with security, and he welcomed it back. There had been too many years when he couldn't afford to immerse himself in the simple pleasure of reading, when he had to pay attention to everything around him. When hyper-vigilance was necessary for survival. 

And now it was a simple pleasure, one he treasured because it meant he and Dean were safe and it was okay to let go.

Daisy pawed at Sam's knee and whined again. Her ears were back, and if Sam didn't know any better, he'd swear he could see worry in her eyes.

"What's the matter, girl? You wanna go out?" Sam looked at his watch and realized that it was almost seven o'clock. He'd been so lost in his book he hadn’t noticed that the afternoon sun had all but disappeared. Their neat living room was draped in shadows, as dusk deepened outside the windows.

It was late March, and the weather was unpredictable. While Sam was lost in the world of _Great Expectations_ , the chilly spring day had turned to an even chillier evening. There was precipitation of some sort, and from the sound of it as it hit the roof, Sam thought maybe it was freezing rain.

He stood to turn on a light, carefully marking his place and closing the book. "You hungry, girl? I am," he said as his stomach growled. "Where the hell is Dean?"

Daisy whined again when she heard Dean's name. Seriously, where the hell could he be? It was Wednesday, which meant he got off work at five, and it was barely a fifteen-minute drive from the construction site to their house. Ron's crew was building a new senior care facility next to the strip mall.

Sam looked around for his phone to see if he'd missed a call. He snagged it off the coffee table and turned it on. There were no messages and no texts, from Dean or anybody else.

Sam dialed Ron's number. Maybe he and Dean had stopped off at Brewer's for a beer after work. Dean would have called if that were the case, because he knew how Sam was, but maybe he'd lost track of the time. If that were the case, Sam was going to have to kick his ass when he got home. Dean _knew_ how -

"Hey, Ron, it's Sam. Is Dean with you?" Sam tried very hard not to sound like either a jealous boyfriend or a worried mom. He didn't think he managed it, given Ron's chuckle. 

"Hey, Sam. No, he's not. He said he was heading right home after work. You mean he's not there yet?" Ron's voice took on a worried tone. "He left just a little after five, man. He should be there –"

"- by now," Sam finished. Shit. A jolt of adrenaline hit him and his mind instantly conjured up sorts of horrific images. 

Dean dead in a fire. Dean dead in a ditch somewhere, the car crumpled around him. Dean caught in a liquor store hold-up with a bullet through his head. 

Dean vanished without a trace, nowhere to be found.

He made an heroic effort to swallow down his fear. Dean was fine. Nothing was wrong.

"I'll call Emmitt, see if he's heard anything," Ron offered. 

"Okay, thanks," Sam said. His heart raced and he felt light-headed. "I'm heading into town now."

And then the doorbell rang, and Daisy went nuts, and in that moment, although he didn't know it yet, Sam's world changed forever.

*

It was all white noise; words and beeps and people bustling around, and Sam had to find a way out of it. He dug his thumb into the old scar on the palm of his left hand, something he hadn't done for years, and that finally jerked him out of his fog and back into the reality of his surroundings. 

And that was much, much worse. Sam wished it _was_ just an hallucination. He ached to see Lucifer's face, he would happily kill someone if he could just hear that smug voice taunting him, telling him Dean had been in a car accident, was in a coma. That way he would know it wasn't true.

He wanted to pray for it to be that easy, but he didn't know who he'd pray to. God may be back in Heaven, but Sam had never felt like he'd been on the Winchester's side.

They didn't bother Cas with much these days.

Sam forced himself to focus on the woman in front of him. She was talking, and he had the feeling she'd been talking for awhile. "I'm sorry," Sam said, and he had to clear his throat and try again. "I'm sorry, can you –"

"Of course," Dr. Raj said, compassion clear on her face. "Dean sustained a head injury in the accident. According to the sheriff –" she nodded at Emmitt "- it looks like your brother hit his head when the car went over the embankment. No one saw it happen, and apparently he was out there for at least an hour."

Sam clenched his jaw until he was afraid he might crack a tooth. Dean had been out there, lying half-submerged in a muddy creek, and no one had known it. Sam had been reading a goddamn book while his brother –

"But that’s a good thing, Sam, in a way," Dr. Raj said, laying her hand on Sam's arm. 

His first impulse was to jerk away from her touch. He'd known her for three years; this was a small town and she'd patched both him and Dean up a few times since they'd moved here. He'd known her for _three years_ and all he felt was incandescent rage when he looked at her. How could exposure be a good thing? 

"Hypothermia means there's less blood needed for vital organs to function," she explained. "It may have minimized the damage to Dean's brain."

Sam nodded tightly. Right. He knew that. He did. He needed to get it together before he lost it completely. Deep breath. "So, what –" He had to clear his throat again. His fucking voice was shot. "So, what are you doing for him?"

The look of sympathy in Dr. Raj's eyes intensified, which made Sam's stomach sink. "We're going to life-flight him to the trauma center at Ohio State." She shrugged. "This is a small hospital, Sam. He needs more help than I can give him."

The last time Dean had been airlifted from the scene of a car accident, the only reason he hadn't died was because of a deal with a demon. Sam suspected that option wasn't going to be available this time.

He knew he should be glad of that.

*

Sam needed to turn off his iPad. He needed to close Google and WebMD and all the rest of a dozen or so websites related to head trauma.

There was such a thing as too much information. Dean already had a doctor – he didn't need Sam to try and be an expert on this shit. Ted Wilson was a perfectly fine neurosurgeon; one of the best in Columbus, and Sam second-guessing him at every turn wasn't going to do anyone any good.

Glancing at the clock, Sam shut everything down. He'd told Henry the day after the accident that he needed a leave of absence from the research for the book, so there was no reason for him to be online anyway.

If he left now, he'd make it to the medical center in time for visiting hours. He hadn't left Dean's side for the first three days after the accident, but sitting there staring at his unresponsive face was making Sam nuts, so he decided to go home to Daisy, just to recharge.

She was the only reason he'd gotten any sleep at all. He'd actually had enough of an appetite to manage a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, and then both Daisy and his state of exhaustion had pressed him upstairs, where the two of them collapsed on the bed, sleeping for almost twelve hours. 

When the sun rose, Sam startled awake, knowing something was wrong but unsure immediately of what. He turned to see Daisy staring at him, her eyes sad and somber, and he remembered.

Sam called Jenny down the street to let her know he needed her to look after Daisy again and made the drive back to Columbus to resume his vigil.

It took two more days for Dean to wake up. Two more days of no one to talk to except the nurses and doctors at the medical center. 

Ron made the two-hour drive once, and Emmitt came for fifteen minutes on the second day. Sam appreciated the effort, but otherwise, he sat by himself at Dean's bedside, or else he paced around the tiny space between Dean's bed and the door. He went down to the cafeteria for coffee and sandwiches and to the gift shop for candy and magazines he didn't read.

Sometimes Sam sat and stared out the window at the busy campus below. He didn't go home again. There was no Bobby, no Cas, no one who _knew_ them to wait with him.

He waited alone.

*

All day Dean had been restless. Sam watched as his eyes moved quickly back and forth beneath his eyelids and as his nose twitched like he had to sneeze. His tongue came out to worry at his lower lip the way it did when he was unsure about something but didn’t want to admit it.

Sam tightened his grip on Dean's hand, and felt his fingers tremble. His right foot kicked against the sheets, and occasionally he tossed his head from side to side.

Sam could barely breathe. To say he'd learned patience over the years would be an understatement, but this. He had no answer for this waiting. No torture Lucifer could have come up with would have been worse than sitting here waiting for Dean to wake up.

"It's so typical, dude. You can't do things the easy way, no, you have to go out of your way to make me crazy. I hate you so much, you have no idea right now."

He'd been running his mouth at Dean for days now, almost a week, and he was hoarse from it. The doctors said that hearing was the last sense to fade away, so there was every reason to believe Dean would hear him if he talked to him.

So Sam had done his best to talk Dean's ear off.

"So, do you remember that time I fell out of a tree? I think we were in…Arkansas, maybe. I was around six, which is probably the only reason I didn't break both legs, or worse. I think little kid bones are more flexible, you know?

Dean wrinkled his nose, but was otherwise unresponsive.

"You told me there was a monkey up there, and that if I could grab him, I could keep him and teach him to talk. Shit, I believed every word you said to me back then."

Sam stopped talking. They'd come back to a place where they didn't lie to each other, and it was one of the best things about the way things were now.

When Dean said something, Sam took him at face value. He didn't look for layers or hidden meanings or the things left unsaid. He just…believed him. 

It was good.

"But I didn't hurt myself at all," he finally continued. "You told me it was because my head was made out of cement, which meant I couldn't break it, but that there was no room in there for any brains."

Sam smiled as he remembered the look on John's face when Sam had asked him if his brains were someplace else other than his head, like maybe his belly, since there was no room inside his skull for anything more than cement.

"I think Dad really worried about my sanity sometimes, you know? He always used to tell me I was the weirdest kid he knew."

So, yeah, he had plenty of things to talk to Dean about. He wasn't going to run out of material. It didn't even worry him that Dean might remember some of Sam's ramblings when he woke up.

But today he wasn't talking. If Dean was in the process of waking up, Sam didn't want to distract him. He could only sit and watch, the words trapped in his throat.

Dean made a snuffling noise, almost a snore, and Sam watched as his eyelids fluttered, more and more rapidly, until finally they fluttered all the way open and stayed that way.

Sam really did stop breathing then. He froze, afraid to move or speak. What if –

Dean coughed, then moaned, then coughed again. The hand Sam didn't have a death grip on reached up to swipe at the oxygen cannula in his nose, and that startled Sam into action.

"Hey," he said, gently grasping Dean's wrist. He stood up as Dean tried to pull away from him. "Hey, Dean, easy dude. It's okay, just relax."

What a stupid thing to say, Sam thought, but he said it about ten more times after he rang for the nurse. 

Dean was not at all impressed at having a tube stuck up his nose, or an IV in his arm, or a catheter in his dick. Sam didn't blame him in the least, but he wasn't about to let him hurt himself. He had his hands full keeping all tubes intact, even though as far as he could tell, Dean was only about half awake.

"Motherfucker," seemed to be the only word Dean was capable of getting out, but he was certainly able to make his meaning clear with just that one word. It was a good choice, and vintage Dean.

It made Sam smile.

The next hour was filled with doctors and nurses, all talking, smiling, asking questions and, to Dean's obvious relief, removing tubes. 

"Fuck, that hurts like a bitch," Dean hissed as an orderly pulled his urinary catheter out. Sam winced in sympathy from his spot against the far wall.

He hung around the periphery of the room, content to watch Dean being taken care of. After the swarm of medical personnel had cleared out, he and Dean were left with just Dr. Wilson. 

Ted stood on one side of Dean's bed, smiling down at him. Sam stood on the other side, wondering how awake Dean was and how much of the accident he remembered.

"Well, Dean, welcome back," Ted said. "How are you feeling?"

Dean frowned, and it was that wrinkle between his eyes that Sam loved, the one that made him want to provoke Dean until it appeared. Sam swallowed, and he was so grateful that Dean was alive, that he was awake, that he hoped no one expected him to speak for the next little while.

"Where the hell am I?" Dean said, confusion clouding his eyes. "I mean," he added, looking around the room, "I get that I'm in a hospital. What hospital, and why am I here?"

"What do you remember?" Ted asked.

Dean stared blankly. "About what?"

"Dean, you were in a car accident. You experienced quite a bump on the head." Ted laid his hand on Dean's shoulder.

Dean nodded. "Okay." He looked around again, his eyes passing right over Sam. "And where am I, again?"

Ted smiled reassuringly. "Columbus, Ohio. At the Ohio State University Medical Center."

"Ohio? What the hell am I doing in Ohio? I live in…" Dean trailed off, looking puzzled. "I live in Kansas," he said slowly. 

Sam began to get a bad feeling about this.

"Dean?" Sam said, pushing himself off from the wall. He moved neared to the bed and reached out toward Dean, but stopped his hand just short of touching him.

"Yeah?" Dean looked up at Sam, meeting his eyes for the first time since he'd woken up. "Do I know you, dude?"

And for the second time in a little over a week, the bottom dropped out of Sam's world.

*

Sam sat in the waiting room, his head in his hands. Cindy, the nurse who'd been working the 3-11 shift almost every day since Dean had been admitted, handed Sam a cup of coffee. 

He didn't want it, but he took it anyway and muttered, "Thanks." He heard Cindy sigh.

"Sam."

"What? Are you going to tell me how temporary this is? How this time tomorrow he'll remember who I am, and we'll be exchanging stories from our childhood?" It was stupid to yell at Cindy. Sam knew that, but he did it anyway.

"No. No, I can't tell you that, Sam," Cindy said. "Because no one knows yet what's going to happen. I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I can't imagine…"

Sam wished he couldn’t imagine, either. But he didn't have to imagine, he was living through it.

"I'm your brother," he'd said, staring at Dean. There wasn't even a hint of recognition in the eyes that stared back at him. "I'm Sam," he said desperately. Surely Dean wouldn't just forget Sam's name. It was the most important name he knew.

"Sorry," Dean said. He looked at Sam curiously. "You're my brother?" Squinting thoughtfully, Dean said, "Wait. Yeah. I remember you." 

All the air whooshed out of Sam's lungs, leaving him light-headed and breathless with relief. He felt his smile stretching across his face, and then Dean said, "At least - last time I saw you, you were just a baby. I guess I must have been around…four? Maybe five years old? Something like that. And now you're baby Sammy, all grown up?"

Sam's smile was gone so quickly it left his lips numb.

"I guess there's no reason not to believe it's really you," Dean said, holding out his hand. "Nice to meet you again, bro." He smiled up at Sam as if it really were nice to be making his acquaintance for the very first time.

Slowly, Sam reached out and took Dean's hand. It was a courteous stranger's handshake, and Dean watched him with a curious smile. "So, did they call you when I had the accident?" He shook his head ruefully. "I don't have the slightest idea what happened."

Sam looked over at Ted, who was watching Dean with an avid yet still seemingly professional interest.

"No, they didn’t. I mean – well, Emmitt came and told me." Sam didn't even know what to do with this, and he had no idea what to say.

"Emmitt? Dean looked politely interested. How in the hell could he only be politely interested in the fact that he'd lost thirty-five fucking years of his life? Why wasn't he freaking the fuck out the way Sam was? And did he really think he and Sam hadn't seen each other since he was four?

"The sheriff where we live," Sam told him. It was probably best to keep it simple at first. "Our friend."

"Oh." Dean looked thoughtful. "So we live in the same town? Is that right?"

Christ. Sam could only nod. 

"Am I married? Do I have a family? Wait, do we live together?" Now the questions were coming fast and furious, as if Dean's interest in his own damn life was suddenly coming alive.

"Sam can fill you on whatever you want to know," Ted said quietly. "Just rest for now, and in the morning we'll do a few more tests, to see if we can figure out what's going on."

"What's going on? What do you mean?" Dean had that wrinkle between his eyes that meant he was confused and about to be annoyed by that fact.

It was like he hadn't even realized that he'd forgotten _everything._

Ted exchanged glances with Sam. "I mean, why you're having trouble remembering some things."

Dean seemed to think about that, then he nodded. "Okay." He yawned and for a minute, he looked just like the four-year old he seemed to have regressed to.

He yawned again and rolled over on to his side. He was asleep within minutes.

And now Sam sat out in the visitors' lounge with Cindy, not having the slightest idea what in the hell was going on with his brother's brain.

Ted joined them after awhile. Sitting down next to him, he patted Sam's knee and said, "Pretty rough, huh? Not what either of us expected or hoped for."

Sam shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

"It's called retrograde amnesia," Ted said. "I know you don't want to hear it, but only time will tell us how much he'll get back."

"You're right, I don't want to hear that," Sam said, glaring at Ted. "I want to hear that you know exactly what's wrong and exactly how to fix it."

"Dean seems to have lost what's called his declarative memory. That is, personal history and abstract facts. He remembers you as a baby, but nothing more recent." He handed Sam one of the two cups of coffee he held. Sam took it gratefully.

"That's thirty-five years," he protested. "How can someone lose thirty-five years of their life?"

Ted shrugged. "It happens sometimes. If there's damage to the temporal lobes of the brain…we're going to do another MRI tomorrow," Ted said. "Not much else to do, but I want to make sure there's nothing else going on, that nothing's changed since his initial CT scan."

"And then I wait?" Sam asked. He took a sip of coffee and grimaced at its bitterness.

"And then you wait," Ted agreed. "I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you more. Amnesia is tricky, and there's not much we can do about it." He sighed, turning to look directly at Sam. "Here's the deal. Dean is more likely to recall older memories first, because he's had them longer and they're stronger. Does that make sense?"

Sam nodded. Except that nothing about this situation made sense, but that wasn't Ted's fault. He set the coffee on the floor next to his feet.

Ted kept talking. "He's probably going to remember general information, the stuff you pick up in almost forty years of life. How to drive, for example. How a computer works, how to order from a menu, how a TV remote works. Language, math, the words to songs, movies he's seen."

"But?" Sam said. He knew there was a "but" coming. He wasn't sure he'd be able to hear it over the rushing in his ears.

"But, he's not going to remember specific details about his life. Obviously, since he doesn't remember you." 

Sam's breath caught at that, and Ted reached out to touch his wrist in sympathy. "I'm sorry to be so blunt. But by exposing him to those memories, you may help him regain them. Take him home. Let him see where he lives, where he works. Tell him stories about his life, about things you've done together over the years. Tell him about the people he loves. Family and friends. Show him pictures. Eventually, he'll either remember, or he won't."

Sam stared at Ted, his heart sinking. Ted had no idea what he was asking Sam to do. He could take Dean home, take him to work and let him hang out with Ron. He could introduce him to Daisy and give him a tour of their house.

But how could Sam tell him stories about his life? What kind of stories would he tell? Would he tell him how their mother had been murdered? How a demon took their father to Hell in exchange for Dean's life?

Should he tell Dean how many living things, monsters or not, that he'd killed over his life?

Could he show him pictures of Ellen, Jo, Bobby, or Rufus? Caleb and Pastor Jim? Their grandfather? And then tell Dean that they were all dead?

No one should have to learn those kinds of things about their life, no one should have to learn that everyone they ever loved was gone.

Sam's hands shook, and he clasped them together, not wanting Ted to see. To ask questions.

He cleared his throat, but still his voice came out hoarse. "What kind of time frame are we talking about? Weeks, months? Years?"

Jesus Christ. This was worse than any nightmare.

Ted shook his head. "Not years, definitely not years. With this type of amnesia, especially when it's due to a head injury, his memories should return fairly soon, if they're going to at all. There may be things he never remembers, or pretty much everything may come back to him all at once." 

Or maybe not at all – Ted didn't say that, but he didn't need to. Sam knew it without it having to be said.

"It's not going to be like in the movies." Ted smiled faintly. "Another blow to the head won't suddenly make him remember."

He placed his hand on Sam's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Sam. I wish I could tell you for sure what's going to happen and when. But the truth is, we just don't know. The brain is a mysterious and miraculous organ."

"Right." Sam had seen plenty of brains splattered around over the years, and he didn’t think it was such a miraculous organ. He thought it was gray and slimy and terribly, terribly fragile.

*

Dean looked around with eager anticipation as Sam pulled the car up the driveway. It was a loaner car, a beat up old Honda Charlie from the garage had brought over to Columbus for him. He'd have to see about finding a car to buy somewhere. The Impala had been towed to Charlie's garage, but Sam told him not to fix it yet. He wanted Dean to do it, or at least have a hand in it.

He just hoped Dean wanted to fix her. Right now he wasn't counting on it, because right now he was living in a nightmare where Dean didn't even know he owned a 1967 Impala.

Charlie said she was a tough old girl, and that the damage could be fixed. Sam only hoped Dean's brain was as tough as his car.

"This is our house?" Dean stared with delight at the small brick house as Sam stopped the car. "We live here? This is awesome, Sammy."

Sam wondered if Dean had any clear memories of the house in Lawrence. In the days after he regained consciousness, it had become obvious that Dean's memories stopped at age four.

Sam didn’t think that was significant at all. Not at all. 

He told Ted a few things about their lives, about how their mother had died when Dean was four, and that their life with their father after that was transient for the most part. Ted was sure the amnesia was due to head trauma, but said that the point when Dean's memories stopped could certainly be considered significant.

"So you're telling me the two of us live here all alone?" Dean asked. "Didn't either one of us ever get married?" He cocked his head at Sam. "You mean to tell me someone who looks like you couldn't find some girl willing to marry him?"

Sam just stared at him. That was a sentence he would never in a million years ever have expected to hear come out of Dean's mouth.

"Whatsa matter, Sammy? Cat got your tongue?" Dean grinned, his eyes twinkling. Sam shook his head and opened the car door. 

"Come on, let's go say hi to Daisy. She missed you."

That was an understatement if there ever was one. Daisy spent the week Dean was in the hospital moping, refusing to eat, and staring expectantly at the door. Sam had come close to hauling her ass to the hospital and sneaking her in to see Dean, just to get her to eat something. 

Sam led Dean up the steps to the back stoop, unlocking the door and entering the kitchen, Dean close on his heels.

Daisy stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, quivering with excitement, and the minute she saw Dean, she leaped forward, shaking and whimpering. Dean's face lit up, and he met her halfway, squatting in the middle of the floor to let her lick his face to her heart's content. 

"Hey, easy there, girl," he said, settling himself down, cross-legged and laughing. Daisy seemed about to shake herself apart with happiness. 

Sam envied her.

Dean looked up at Sam, a grin on his face. "She's beautiful," he said.

A lot of words could be used to describe Daisy, but Sam would never have picked _beautiful_ as one of them.

He busied himself with making a couple of ham sandwiches and fishing two Cokes out of the refrigerator, while Dean reacquainted himself with their dog. 

As he spread mustard on slices of bread, Sam thought about Daisy, about unconditional love and acceptance. Daisy didn't care if Dean remembered her or not; she was just happy to have him there, alive and breathing.

It made him feel like an asshole that he was having trouble doing the same.

They sat at the kitchen table, eating their sandwiches and drinking their pop. Dean just kept smiling, looking around and taking everything in with an expression on his face Sam didn't think he'd ever seen before. He couldn't quite place it. It was almost pleasure, but less complicated.

"This is a really nice house, Sammy. I like it."

"Um, yeah, that's great." Sam couldn't smooth out the edge in his voice, couldn't just take the compliment, as Dean so clearly meant it. It wasn't his house to accept praise for, it was _their_ house, and they'd worked damn hard for it. They'd _earned_ it.

Together.

Sam wasn't about to take credit for it, as if Dean hadn't been there with him every step of the way.

Dean looked at him funny, but he didn't say anything, just shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth.

They finished their meal in silence. Dean kept looking around the kitchen with an air of interest while he ate. It was painful the way his eyes landed without recognition on the curtains at the window over the sink or the picture of a peaceful blue lake on the wall. 

They'd grown up in a hodgepodge of motel rooms and cheap apartments, with the car as their safety net. Neither one of them had had the slightest notion of how to make a house feel like a home when they'd ended up here, but they'd figured out over the past couple of years how to make this house be the place they both wanted to be at the end of the day.

And now Dean looked at the things they'd settled on to make the house _theirs_ with nothing in his gaze but curiosity. 

Sam's sandwich tasted like sawdust, and he made a pained sound when he tried to swallow.

Dean didn't notice. He drank down the last of his soda and yawned, a huge yawn that Sam was sure must have cracked his jaw. He looked at Sam sheepishly. 

"I guess I could use a nap. Who knew coming home from the hospital could wear a guy out so much?"

Sam nodded. Of course Dean was tired.

Standing up from the table, Dean waited, shifting from foot to foot until it hit Sam that he was waiting for Sam to show him where his bedroom was.

There hadn't been much stuff to bring home from the hospital; just a plastic bag filled with flimsy hospital slippers, a cheap toothbrush, and a half-used box of rough tissues. Sam had tossed it all in the trash when they got in the house, so it wasn't like Dean had anything to unpack.

Sam's heart stuttered. Ted had said to tell Dean anything he wanted to know, that the more information he had, the more likely he would be to remember something. Somehow Sam really couldn't imagine saying, "Hey, Dean, by the way, even though I'm your brother, we sleep in the same bed and fuck at least three times a week, maybe more, if neither one of us is having issues with nightmares. And you sleep on the right side of the bed, in case you wondered."

He didn't really think Dean's innocent smile would still be in place once he heard that. He wanted to kick himself – he hadn't even thought about it before bringing Dean home. He didn't know it that was denial or stupidity.

The house had two bedrooms. The second one even had a bed in it, but it was dusty and unused except for storage. There weren't so many people left in their lives that they kept the guest room ready for occupancy.

"You know what?" Sam said. "I haven't gotten around to doing much laundry while you were in the hospital. Take a nap on the couch, dude, while I get some clean sheets on your bed."

Dean opened his mouth to protest, and Sam added, "I'm sure Daisy's been sacking out on your pillows."

Dean made a face and shrugged. "Sure." 

Once Sam was sure Dean was asleep, he went upstairs. He stood in the doorway of their bedroom, unable to make himself go in.

The bed was made; Sam had done that before he'd gone to the hospital that morning. The nightstand on dean's side of the bed, which was actually a battered wooden tray-table from a set Sam had found at a garage sale last spring, overflowed with magazines, mostly car magazines like Hot Rod and Popular Mechanics. Sam was completely unable to convince Dean that reading on an iPad was the way to go. Even with higher quality pictures, Dean said he just plain liked magazines better.

Sam turned, going across the hall to the other bedroom. This was where they stored things like an old sleeping bag Dean had never been able to bring himself to throw away, a couple of battered duffle bags, clothing they no longer wore – basically the detritus of a life spent on the road.

There was no real reason they'd kept it all, but Sam suspected there was a lingering doubt in the back of both their minds that the life they'd found here was permanent, and that a small part of them felt the need to be ready to resume the transitory way they'd lived most of their lives together.

Numbly, he started clearing things away from the bed, dragging them across the hallway and shoving them into the Dean's side of the closet in their room. In turn, he carried Dean's clothes and shoes over to the spare room, hanging his shirts in the now-empty closet and arranging his shoes in a semi-neat pile.

Years of living out of small rooms and apartments, not to mention the car, had trained them to keep their shit in a fairly neat and organized way. Dean had relaxed a little since they'd been living here, but he was never careless with his things.

Sam knew without thinking about it how to spread Dean's crap around the spare room so that it looked like it had always been there. He piled t-shirts, socks, and underwear into the drawers of the beat up dresser that stood against the far wall, tossing his keys and wallet on top.

They weren't much for keepsakes, but they had a few pictures, framed and placed carefully around their bedroom. 

There was the picture of them as children with their parents that they'd found in a box in the basement of the house in Lawrence so many years ago, along with one of Bobby waking up from a nap on Rufus' couch, flipping Dean off as he snapped the picture with his phone.

There was a picture of Sam and Dean together, leaning against the side of the Impala that Bobby had taken shortly before his house had burned down. Sam had his hand firmly planted in the small of Dean's back, and although it wasn't obvious if you weren't looking for it, Dean's body was subtly turned towards Sam, leaning in, the way it almost always was when they were close enough to touch. Dean was smiling up at Sam in a way that always caught at Sam's heart when he saw it.

Sam left the pictures where they were, except for the one of them by the car. He tucked that into the bottom drawer of the dresser, back behind a handful of shirts Dean hardly ever wore anymore and weren't worth moving to the other bedroom. He shoved a few other things in there as well, Dean's stuff that he couldn't find a place for in the spare room so quickly.

He pounded the dust out of the mattress in the spare room with the flat of his hands, and he was surprised to find his palms were stinging and his chest was tight when he finally stopped. 

Clean sheets and the room was all set to go. Sam carried the nightstand from Dean's side of their bed, along with all his magazines, across the hall and settled it next to Dean's new bed and then stood back and looked the room over with a critical eye.

There was no reason for Dean to believe he and Sam were anything more than brothers, so he didn’t think there was anything here that would make him suspicious.

_Hey, Sam, I was wondering, why does this room look like no one's slept in here for years? Are you and I fucking, or something?_

No, not likely.

Sam went back to their room, _his_ room now, and sat down on the side of the bed, his knees suddenly weak. He leaned forward on his elbows and ran his fingers through his hair.

His hands were trembling.

"Sam? Dude, where did you go?"

Sam startled, then looked at his watch. He'd been up here for an hour.

"Upstairs," he called back. He had to clear his throat a few times to get that one word out loud enough for Dean to hear it. "In our room," he whispered.

Dean's footsteps sounded on the stairs. "Is this my room?" he asked as he poked his head around the door. 

"No, your room, um, your room is over there," Sam said, gesturing across the hall.

"Awesome," Dean said, smiling at him. His eyes were bright and clear, and Sam was suddenly angry. Why the hell wasn't Dean freaking out? He'd lost everything - his whole life - and he here he was, as cheerful as if he'd just beaten Sam at a simple video game, or actually caught a fish in the creek.

Dean turned and went across the hall, and Sam stayed right where he was. He didn’t need to see Dean happily exploring his room.

"So I guess I like cars, huh, Sammy?" Dean called. 

Sam slowly got to his feet. His joints felt stiff, as if he'd run ten miles and then not stretched after. His hands still trembled, and he shoved them into the pockets of his jeans.

He made himself walk across the hall to the other room. "Yeah, Dean, you do." He stood in the doorway watching his brother. Dean was looking around in delight at the sparse furniture and faded wallpaper. 

"This is an awesome room, Sammy." He frowned, a small wrinkle between his eyes. "I remember a room with lots of trucks and…maybe some football stuff. Did I have a room like that in…Kansas, was it?"

The only reason Sam knew the answer to that question was because he'd seen that very room when they'd been running from Zachariah in Heaven. He nodded. This was good, he could give Dean some details, maybe jog his memory a bit.

He nodded. "It was blue, and there were a ton of trucks."

Dean's smile widened, and it caught at Sam, sharp and painful. 

Downstairs, Daisy barked her _let me out or I'll piss on the rug_ bark, and Sam said, grateful for the excuse, "Daisy needs to go out," before he turned and hurried down the stairs.

[](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/382/109588)

The next few days were completely surreal. 

It slowly began to dawn on Sam that Dean was happy. He'd forgotten everything that happened to him after the age of four, and so all the bad things were gone. This is what his brother would have been like if nothing supernatural had ever shown an interest in the Winchester family.

He was cheerful, with a sunny, open disposition. He had the same goofy sense of humor, only without the bitter edge he'd acquired over the years.

He wasn't so different from the Dean Sam knew and loved, but the darkness was gone. This Dean was so bright Sam could barely look at him.

When Sam woke on Saturday morning, the sun was barely up. He rubbed a hand across his face and sat up, swinging his feet onto the floor. 

He felt restless in a way he hadn't in a long time. He stood and dragged on a pair of shorts, pulled on his running shoes, and headed downstairs. He tried to sneak past Daisy, although he knew full well it was a lost cause.

"Quiet, don't wake Dean up," Sam whispered to her, and her tail thumped obligingly on the floor. They ducked outside for a quick pee before Sam let her back in the house. "I'll be back," he said, and she cocked her head at him.

Sam rolled his eyes at the both of them and then made for the road that ran in front of their house. He ran his usual five-mile loop, focusing on his breathing and letting his pounding feet keep him from thinking too much.

When he got back, out of breath and sweaty but feeling a little less like he might jitter off into the outer atmosphere, he stood at the sink drinking water, staring out at the apple tree in the back yard.

After he'd cooled down some, Sam went upstairs to take a shower. 

Dean was sitting in the middle of their bed, the picture of John, Mary, a four-year old Dean, and a baby Sammy in his hands.

He looked so natural there, sitting on the edge of the bed with one foot under him, getting mud on the comforter like he always did, like Sam always bitched at him for, that for a second, Sam forgot. 

He forgot that Dean didn't know he belonged there, and he felt a smile begin to form, until Dean looked up at him with curious, friendly eyes.

"Hey, is this us?" Dean held the picture up for Sam to see, like Sam wouldn't know what it was.

It was like a sucker punch to the gut. Sam managed not to let it show on his face as he nodded wordlessly.

"Mom was pretty," Dean said. He closed his eyes. "I remember her hair, what it smelled like."

Sam had no idea what their mother's hair had smelled like. The only memories Dean had were memories of things that Sam would never know. 

Dean opened his eyes and looked at him. Sam tried to smile, only partially succeeding if the puzzled expression on Dean's face was anything to go by.

"Tell me about them?"

Sam gestured down at his sweat-soaked t-shirt. "Let me shower first."

Dean nodded. "Sure, Sammy." He looked back down at the picture in his hands, a soft smile on his face.

Sam bowed his head under the spray, letting the hot water pound down and take some of the kinks out of his tense shoulders. It hit him then, as he stood there, why Dean kept calling him Sammy. That's all he remembered. He remembered Sam as a baby, nothing more.

It's not like Sam hadn't known that. But Dean had hardly called him _Sam_ at all since he'd woken up in the hospital. He hadn't called him _princess,_ or _Samantha_ , or _geekboy_ either.

 _Sammy._ Dean didn't know anything about who Sam Winchester was. Not the first thing.

He made himself turn the shower off and get out, toweling himself dry before wrapping the towel around his waist. Going back into the bedroom, he was pulling a clean pair of boxers out of a drawer when he became conscious of Dean's eyes on him.

He turned to look. Dean was staring at him, the tips of his ears pink. Sam felt an answering rush of heat. Maybe parading around half-naked in front of Dean would help jog his memory. Ted did say to give him all the information he could.

"What?" Sam resisted the urge to bring his boxers up to cover his chest.

"Nothing." Dean shook his head. "Dude, you're built." He looked down at himself, tugging the neck of his shirt out to peer inside down at his belly. "I don't have abs like that." He looked back up at Sam. "Shouldn't those be genetic, or something? Run in the family?"

Sam surprised himself with a short laugh. "Dude, no, you have to work to get these." The impulse to laugh faded as he thought of Dean moving his way down Sam's chest, placing wet, open-mouth kisses across his stomach, tracing the outline of muscles with his tongue.

Apparently the sight of those muscles wasn't triggering Dean's memory, and suddenly Sam couldn't bear the scrutiny any longer.

He turned away, and clutching his boxers and the first shirt he could get a hand on, he escaped back to the safety of the bathroom.

When he was dressed, he went back into the bedroom, pulling on a pair of jeans. Dean still had the picture in his hands, studying it carefully, and he looked up at Sam, an expression of hope on his face.

"Sammy?"

Sam nodded and sat down on the bed next to Dean, careful to keep at least a foot of space between them. "That picture was taken in Lawrence, Kansas. That's where we were born, and that's the house we lived in. Dad's name was John, and Mom's name was Mary."

"I think I knew that," Dean said. "Do they still live in Lawrence?"

Shit. "No. Um, Mom died shortly after this picture was taken."

Dean's head shot up, and he looked at Sam in shock. "Mom's dead? She – she died a long time ago?"

"Yeah, Dean. I’m sorry." Sam took a deep breath. Might as well get this over with. "And Dad died about ten years ago. Car accident." That was as close as Sam was going to come to telling Dean the truth about their parents' deaths.

"I don't – what year is it now?"

Sam was sure they'd told Dean what year is was when he woke up, but maybe him forgetting was part of the whole weird _don't worry, be happy_ vibe he had going, which Sam didn’t get in the least. If it were him, he would be _frantic_ to know everything, to _remember._ Maybe it was some kind of defense mechanism.

"It's 2015," Sam said. Dean nodded his head slowly.

"So after Mom died, Dad took care of us?" 

That was one way to put it, Sam guessed. "He did. He took good care of us." Sam's eyes pricked with heat. It was true. John had done his best, at least his best as he had seen it. 

"What was it like? Did we stay in Lawrence?" Dean grinned. "Was I captain of the high school football team? I dated hot cheerleaders, didn't I? I bet there were cheerleaders, huh, Sammy?"

Sam laughed weakly. "Yeah, Dean, there were cheerleaders." He paused, trying to decide how much to say, then continued. "But not in Lawrence. We moved around a lot."

Dean looked at him curiously. "What did Dad do?"

"Uh, odd jobs. He took jobs all over the country. Sometimes we stayed in one place for a few months, sometimes we were on the move."

"Did either one of us go to college? You look smart, Sammy." He closed his eyes briefly, looking pensive, then opened them and shook his head. "I don't feel like I have a college education in here," he said, tapping his forehead and grinning at Sam.

"No, well, I went for a couple of years," Sam said reluctantly. He hoped Dean didn't ask too much about that. If he had it to do over again, he never would have gone to Stanford. It wouldn't have made a difference either way, none of it had made any difference in the end, but leaving had hurt Dean at the time, and for that Sam was sorry.

"I knew you were smart," Dean said triumphantly. He glanced back down at the picture in his hands, and then seeming to lose interest, he stood up. "You want some breakfast? I could eat a horse."

[](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/382/110014)

Ted said there was no reason Dean couldn't go back to work. His actual head injury was healed, and physically, he was fine. Plus, it was early spring, and construction was picking back up after the winter lull.

Ron was happy to have Dean back on the construction crew, even if Dean did keep forgetting how to do certain things.

"Hey, he's a warm body, and he knows how to work. He mostly remembers what to do." Ron laughed. He took the beer Sam handed him. "He just keeps forgetting how to work the nail gun. It's like a mental block, or something."

It was a warm April evening, and the three men were out in their small backyard, sitting around shooting the shit.

Dean laughed along with Ron as he flipped the hamburgers smoking on the grill. "I can't help it, it just doesn't feel right, holding a gun in my hand like that."

"It's not a gun," Sam said sharply. Rod and Dean both looked at him, and he shrugged. "It's not." He tossed Daisy's ball toward the fence and watched as she chased after it.

"Okaaay, Sammy," Dean drawled. It was obnoxious, and it made Sam ache; he'd missed that tone so much.

Dean slid the hamburgers onto a plate, and the three men sat at the beat up picnic table and ate hamburgers and pasta salad, washing it down with icy cold beer. 

The conversation was desultory and amiable, like a lot of conversation was with Dean these days. All on the surface, because as far as Sam was concerned, there was nothing else there.

Since Sam mostly worked from home, doing research and writing on his laptop, Dean had started driving Sam's car to work. He still had the loaner from George, both of them hoping Dean would show some interest in the Impala.

"Your car is at the garage, you know," Sam reminded him now. 

"I know, and I'm still waiting for them to fix it," Dean said, as if it were just a car and it was okay for someone else to put their hands all over it.

"I thought you might want to do that yourself," Sam said. He didn't look at Dean as he said it, didn't want to see the indifference on his face.

"Me?" Dean's eyes widened in surprise. "Am I a mechanic? I thought I worked construction."

"What, you can't know how to do more than one thing in life?" Sam said more sharply than he'd intended. "The car – well, she's pretty important to you, so I thought…"

Dean shrugged. "Whatever, man. A car's a car. If it's totaled, we should just find another one." He snickered. "If that piece of shit you're driving is any indication of the quality of the vehicles we own…" he trailed off as Sam and Ron stared. "What?"

"Dean, man, that car is your pride and joy," Ron said. "I've even heard you call it _baby_ on occasion."

"I would never," Dean said with a surprised laugh. "A car's just a means of transportation," he reiterated. He looked thoughtful. "Wait, is that why I have all those Popular Mechanic magazines? Am I some kind of car freak? Wow," he shook his head. "That's just weird."

Sam thought he might be sick. How could this possibly be his brother?

"Let's go look at it tomorrow after work anyway, what do you say?" Sam asked, as casually as he could.

"Whatever. If it makes you happy," Dean said. The weird thing was, Sam felt like Dean really meant that.

The trip to Charlie's garage was a complete failure as far as Sam was concerned. 

Dean got out of the car when they arrived at the garage and looked around uncertainly. Charlie came out to meet them.

"Hey, I'm Charlie," he said, holding out his hand. He acted like introducing himself to a guy he'd know for several years was something he did every day. Sam was grateful for his tact.

"Dean," said Dean, shaking Charlie's hand. He grinned, looking more at ease. "But you already knew that."

"I did," Charlie said, nodding and smiling back at Dean. He clapped Sam on the shoulder. "Hey, Sam."

The three of them stood in the gravel parking lot for an awkward moment, waiting for someone to make the first move, until Charlie finally said, "Come on in, and let's take a look at your car. She's a beauty," he added. 

Dean smiled back at him, looking uncertain again. "Okay."

"This was one sweet car," Dean agreed. He ran his hand over the Impala's hood, and for a minute Sam felt such hope that he was light-headed with it. "But I'm not sure it's worth fixing. I mean, what year is this thing, anyway?"

"She's a 1967," Charlie said reverently. 

"Whoa, that's old. That's –" Dean broke off, frowning. "What year is it again, Sammy?"

Sam's throat had pretty much closed off at that point, and he just shook his head.

"It's 2015," Charlie said. He laughed awkwardly as he watched Dean's face. "Don't hurt yourself doing the math. She's forty-eight years old."

"Holy shit," Dean said, awe in his voice. But it was the wrong kind of awe. It was awe for how old the Impala was, not for how beautiful she was, or how she'd been there with them for their whole lives. 

How she was their home no matter what.

Dean shrugged. "Whatever you think, Sammy," he said, as if he really didn't care one way or another what they did with the car.

Sam called Charlie the next day, and they agreed that he would keep the car at his place, and that Sam would pay him a monthly fee for the space. He wouldn't repair her yet, because Sam was positive that Dean would want to do it when his memory returned.

"But Sam, if too much time goes by, she's going to start rusting out where she's damaged. I wouldn't be doing your brother any favors if I let that happened."

"Let me know when you think it's time." 

Sam was sure Dean's memory would come back before the Impala started to rust. 

[](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/382/110237)

The house didn't really have a basement. It was more like a crawl space, although Dean could stand upright in it. The entry was one of those double door things that opened upward, like in _The Wizard of Oz,_ and they kept it pretty secure, using several padlocks and hiding the keys in places like under a fake rock and an old flower pot.

Dean had thought it was dangerous to lock things up. He was more afraid of being caught unprepared than he was of any random – and admittedly infrequent – visitors finding their way into the cellar.

But Sam insisted, so the remnants of their hunting days resided down there. Salt, shotguns, lighter fluid, holy water, crucifixes, a million books, even Ruby's knife was there. 

Once in a while they got word of a hunt, of something supernatural that needed killing, but for the most part, with the departure of the Leviathans back to Purgatory and God showing up to take over Heaven again, they didn't often have to go down in the cellar.

Sam had no idea how Dean found the keys. Maybe it was the natural curiosity of the four-year old he so clearly remembered being, but however it happened, Sam walked around the corner of the house to see the two sides of the cellar door standing wide open.

Oh, shit. The surge of adrenaline left the skin over his shoulder blades tingling in his panic.

"Dean?" Sam ducked his head as he made his way down the steps leading to the cellar. "Dean!"

Sam stopped in his tracks and took a deep breath. Dean stood there with Ruby's knife in one hand and his old sawed-off shotgun in the other. He was clearly both fascinated and terrified by that fascination.

"Something you want to tell me, Sammy?" he said, and he sounded so much like the old Dean, with such an exasperated edge to his voice that Sam felt a leap of hope in his chest that maybe seeing all this crap somehow made him remember something.

Sam tilted his head at the knife, never taking his eyes off Dean. "Do you remember that?"

"No. Why would I remember something like this?" Dean stared at the knife as if it were the most horrific thing he'd ever seen. 

And maybe it was.

"And what the hell is this?" Dean waved the gun around at the rest of the room, and Sam flinched instinctively. 

"Dude," he said sharply. "Careful with that thing."

Dean dropped the gun like it was suddenly burning his hand, and Sam jerked back in response. "Shit, Dean, come on."

"Jesus," Dean said, his voice trembling, betraying just how freaked out he was. "What the hell?"

"Dean, I can explain," Sam started, holding a cautious hand out to his brother.

"No, seriously, what the hell?" Dean was almost yelling now, and Sam could hear Daisy's answering bark coming from the backyard. "What is this stuff, Sam, and why is it in our basement?"

"Put the knife down – carefully! Dammit, Dean, watch what you're doing with that shit." Sweat trickled down the back of Sam's shirt. "Stop waving things around and come up out of here." He held up a hand to stop Dean's protest. "I'll explain, just – let's go someplace where you're less likely to kill us both."

"Hey," Dean said, looking offended. That was an improvement over looking freaked out, and Sam would gladly take it.

It was touch and go for a minute, with Dean seeming ready to insist that he wasn't budging until he got an explanation, but then he looked around the room again and kind of paled when he caught sight of a row of machetes leaning up against the far wall.

"Okay, let's get out of here," he said tightly, and he pushed his way past Sam and up the cellar steps.

Daisy was right there waiting for them, and she barked sharply at Sam. She knew when they went down there it meant they were leaving, and that Sarah Brown from down the street would be coming over to make sure she had food and water and to let her out a couple of times a day.

Sam knew Daisy didn't like being left, because she always protested when they disappeared into the cellar to grab whatever they needed for whatever hunt they were going on.

"Come on, girl, it's fine," Sam said, patting her on the head. "Let's go in the house."

After getting Dean settled at the kitchen table with a beer, and Daisy on the floor beside him with her favorite chewtoy, Sam said, "Okay. This is going to sound weird. It's pretty unbelievable, actually. Just - just listen."

Dean took a long swallow of beer, and then waved the bottle at Sam saying, "Am I going to need something stronger?"

"Let's reserve judgment on that," Sam answered. Since the accident, Dean had only been drinking the occasional beer, and Sam wanted to keep it that way. He didn't miss the whiskey at all.

Sam tipped his own beer up, draining the bottle and trying to think how in the world to even start. He dug into the refrigerator to get them each another beer, handing one bottle to Dean and twisting the cap off his own. Finally, he sat down at the table and stared out the window over the sink, gathering his thoughts.

"Dude, just spit it out," Dean said. "Quit stalling. Are you a serial killer?"

That was one way to describe it. Sam took a deep breath. "Okay. There are things – supernatural things. Things like, like ghosts." He'd start there, that seemed the simplest to explain. God, he hoped Ted was right when he said most people with amnesia retained their general knowledge even when they couldn't remember anything about their own lives. He wasn't sure how he'd go about explaining vampires and werewolves to Dean if he didn't know what they were.

Dean had an exhaustive store of pop culture trivia stored in his brain, and Sam could only hope he still had access to it.

"Ghosts? Like Patrick Swayze kind of ghosts?"

Sam breathed a small sigh of relief. "Yeah, sort of. And there are vampires and werewolves, too." That seemed basic enough to start with. It's not like there were a lot of wendigos or strigas in popular culture for Dean to reference.

"And these things are real." It didn't sound like a question, but Sam nodded _yes_ anyway.

"Among other things," he said.

"And?"

"And we hunt them," Sam said, looking straight at Dean. "We hunt them down, and we kill them so they don't hurt people. All that stuff in the cellar, that's what we use to do it."

He waited, almost lightheaded with the fear that Dean would get up and walk out of the kitchen, out of Sam's life. 

"We hunt them. And we kill them? You and me?" Dean looked more thoughtful and less flabbergasted than Sam would have expected him to be at the news that he and his brother went around killing monsters, or that there was a big pile of gruesome weapons in the basement that they used to that purpose.

"Why?" Dean said.

Sam didn't understand the question. "Why what?"

"Sammy," Dean said impatiently. "Why do we hunt them and kill them?"

"Like I said, because they hurt people," Sam said, as if it were just that simple. "Why else?"

"No, I get that part," Dean said, sounding as if he really did get it. "I mean, why _us?"_

Oh. The sixty-four thousand dollar question, to which there were too many answers to choose from. It wasn't even like Sam could just start at the beginning, since which beginning would he pick? The one with Cain and Abel? Lucifer and Michael? Zachariah and Azazel? 

He decided to start with John and Mary.

"The house fire Mom died in wasn't an accident," Sam said, not mincing his words. "Dad's death wasn't a simple car accident, either. They were killed by demons."

Sam watched Dean's face as he listened to what Sam was telling him. Dean existed these days without his hundred and one defense mechanisms, his walls, his jokes and repression and alcohol. His face was naked, nothing for him to hide behind.

It wasn't easy to watch. Sam had almost no recollection of Dean looking innocent, or even shocked. That hadn't happened in a very long time.

Sam went on. "After Mom died, Dad discovered that something supernatural killed her. He learned to be a hunter, and he taught us, too. The thing he was hunting finally caught up with him eight years ago." That was a simply as he could put it, and he thought simple was what Dean needed right now.

Dean stared some more, and then he blinked. "I – I think I believe you, Sammy," he said. "I mean, why else would there be all those things in the basement." He thought some more. "So, I guess this means we're pretty badass, huh?"

That surprised a laugh out of Sam. "Yeah, Dean," he agreed. "We're pretty badass."

Dean asked a few more questions as they finished their beers, but all in all he seemed content to know the basics without the details. His memory didn't seem to have been jogged in the least, and when he said he was going to take Daisy for a walk, Sam let him go without protest.

*

Sam didn't often have nightmares. Except for back when he was having visions, he never really did. His subconscious rarely worked through his shit by way of his dreams. 

When he had them nowadays, they were usually about Hell, but they were almost muted compared to the kind of dreams he suspected Dean had.

Dean, of course, downplayed his own nightmares while acting like he was personally responsible for Sam's. It used to bother Sam until he came to see that Dean needed that, needed to treat Sam's dreams about Hell as something major.

Something he could do something about. 

But now Dean didn't carry that burden of guilt, had no knowledge that Sam went to Hell or why. Knew nothing of deals or demon blood or breaking in Hell, nothing of Seals and betrayals. This Dean had no knowledge of angels or destiny, and so when Sam woke up screaming one night two weeks after Dean came home, he was concerned, but not unduly so.

It was the usual stuff; unbearable heat, sticky blood, the air heavy with the stench of copper. Lucifer's voice, light in its amusement, tickled Sam's ear as he crowded up behind him, draping himself over Sam's back, his arms wrapped around Sam, his hands unyielding on Sam's fingers. 

There was a scalpel in Sam's right hand, clenched tight in his fist. He wanted so badly to drop it, to uncurl his fingers from around the hard metal handle, but Lucifer held fast, guiding his hand, slicing through Dean's flesh as if it were butter. 

Lucifer forced Sam's other hand to peel skin away as the scalpel carved intricate patterns over Dean's chest, his stomach, his throat. 

Dean screamed until the scalpel bit deep, slicing through his larynx. The screams were soundless then, but they still came, sending flecks of blood all across Sam's face.

Lucifer forced Sam's hands lower, cutting and stripping away skin and muscle as they went, drawing a line of blood down the length of Dean's inner thigh. 

"Sam. Sammy, wake up. Sam!" Dean's voice, but how was that possible, with his soundless screams, it wasn't possible, and Sam couldn’t bear to hear Dean's voice, stretched tight with agony, hoarse from screaming.

"No, no," and it was Sam screaming now, wrenching his hands out of Lucifer's grasp and heavily striking something with a dull thud.

"Sam, ow, dammit, wake up!" Hands gripped his wrists, and Sam fought against them as Dean's voice smoothed out and lost the horrifying notes of pain and terror of Sam's dream.

Sam fought to catch his breath, to surface and find himself here, in his own bed. The grip on his wrists loosened and let go, as Sam panted and fell back against the mattress. He sobbed once, pulling in a breath.

"Sam?" Dean said softly. "Sammy, come on, open your eyes."

Sam did as he was told - he opened his eyes to see his brother's worried face above him. Relief showed in Dean's eyes, and then he backed up and patted Sam awkwardly on the shoulder. 

"You okay now, dude? That must have been a helluva dream."

Sam knew he usually woke up screaming from his nightmares, and he swallowed around a dry throat. He nodded. "Yeah," he said roughly, his voice hoarse. "I'm good."

He was far from good, but he couldn't ask this Dean for what he needed. This Dean wasn't going to curl around him, hold him and grasp his wrists until the feel of Lucifer's hands was lost in Dean's touch. 

This Dean wasn't going to plant soft, apologetic kisses against his hair or on the soft skin behind his ear, whispering, "It's okay, Sammy, I've got you," over and over into his neck until he'd pushed away the sound of Lucifer's voice.

This Dean wasn't going to slip his thigh between Sam's knees, reach around to palm Sam's cock, push Sam's boxers down just enough that his own cock could slide against Sam's ass while Dean's hand moved over him, making him come while his other arm tightened around his chest, spilling his own orgasm out against the small of Sam's back, until the dream receded, faded away, back behind the wall that was no longer there.

Sam had always been so grateful to Castiel for taking the memories away from him. Dean said it was the least he could do. He'd never completely forgiven Cas for breaking down the wall in the first place, but Sam had done that a long time ago.

Dean looked at him uncertainly, then pulled back, pulled his hands away, and stood up. "Um, okay, I'm just going to go back to bed." He gestured in the direction of his own room, and Sam had to clench his jaw and grind his teeth together to keep the words inside. He wanted to beg Dean to stay, to pull him down beside him, back where he belonged, but he couldn't.

He spent the rest of the night staring wide-eyed into the darkness, feeling more alone than he had while Dean was in Hell.

*

Garth called to tell them to tell them about a probable salt-and-burn three hours away, just outside of Pittsburgh.

"I'd take it, but I got something sweeter going on in Chicago," he told Sam. 

Sam spent the entire afternoon thinking about it. He was still distracted at supper, enough that Dean noticed. 

"What is it, Sammy?"

Sam studied him for a moment and then made up his mind. "Hey, Dean, listen for a minute, okay?" He put his fork down and waited for Dean to stop sneaking bits of chicken to Daisy and pay attention.

"There's a ghost killing old ladies about three hours from here," Sam said. Dean's eyes widened. "I thought maybe we could go take care of it."

Sam waited nervously to see what Dean would say. There was a time, before everything, when Dean loved to hunt. He hadn't been like Sam, who hated everything about it when he was a kid. Dean had loved everything about it, loved the training, the skills, and the idea that they were helping people.

He'd never regained that love, even now that they were settled, and the pile of shit that had been their lives had resolved into a more bearable condition. They still hunted, of course, when the need arose – Dean still seemed to think they had no choice. _People will die, Sam, is that what you want?_ sounding just like Dad, as if they were the only ones who could ever do the job, but he'd never found the joy in it again.

Dean looked at Sam, smile wide and eyes bright. "Hell, yeah, Sammy. Let's do that. Show me what to do, I bet I'm a fast learner, right? I am, aren't I?" He grinned and Sam felt it in his chest, sharp and deep.

"Yeah, Dean, you're a fast learner," Sam assured him with a helpless smile. "You sure you're not still freaked out by what you found in the cellar?" he asked, half-teasing.

"Hey, fuck you, I wasn't freaked out." He grinned sheepishly. "I was just – surprised. I'm just happy you didn't turn out to be a serial killer."

Sam chose to ignore that comment.

"Okay, now, see here, look," Sam said after the supper dishes were washed and put away. He opened his laptop, turning it to face Dean. "Here're the newspaper articles about two women that have been found dead in their gardens. Do you see why this would get Garth's attention, make him think there was something supernatural going on?"

Dean looked up at Sam. "Who the hell is Garth?"

"He's another hunter." Sam could have kicked himself. He wasn't looking forward to the questions he was sure to get from Dean about people they used to know. "He's the one who called to tell me about this job."

"You mean there are other hunters?" Dean looked eager. "Do we know any of them? Are there a lot? I'll bet we're the best, huh, Sammy." That cockiness was pure Dean.

Sam smiled at Dean's enthusiasm. "We've met some other hunters before, sure," he said. He really wasn't ready to tell Dean how many of their friends were dead or about those terrible years when they lost everyone they cared about.

Maybe this hunt would trigger something, make Dean remember something, and then Sam wouldn't have to tell him anything.

"Do we keep in touch with –"

"No," Sam said, before Dean could even finish asking.  
"Not really."

"Oh," Dean said, looking deflated. "Okay, Sammy."

Sam closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and then opened them again, smiling at Dean. "Someday I'll tell you about all of our friends, but not today. Today let's go get rid of a ghost."

Dean peered at him uncertainly for a minute, then grinned. It was the kind of grin that tugged at Sam's heart, made his breath catch. The kind of grin that had been missing for so long, but that he'd started to see again in the past year or so.

Now it was back in full force, and it was destroying Sam's equilibrium little by little every time he saw it.

"Just show me how."

They drove the three hours to the outskirts of Pittsburgh in Sam's piece of shit loaner car, with Dean asking a million questions and Sam trying to answer them all. He told Dean stories about other spirits they'd dealt with. A lot of the stories were from when they were young.

"So Dad was pretty badass, too, I guess," Dean said wistfully. "I wish I could remember."

I wish you could remember _me,_ Sam thought with some irritation, but he guessed it never occurred to Dean that there was anything to remember. Sam was here, they were brothers, and the here and now was all Dean seemed interested in knowing.

The trouble in Claysville turned out to be the vengeful spirit of the past president of the local gardening club, who was upset that the elderly ladies she killed - with a gardening trowel through the throat, a nice touch - had been letting their gardens go. It was still only April, but apparently that didn't matter. Fallen leaves from autumn choked the roses in poor Mrs. Stanley's one-time prize-winning garden, while as for Mrs. Howard's rhododendrons, well, they looked just awful. 

Lydia Collins wasn't going to stand for that, even if she had been dead for a year.

Dean did okay on the job, although his instincts were a little slow. He wasn't keyed in to Sam they way he'd been in the past, which meant Sam ended up being thrown into the side of Mrs. Stanley's tool shed before Dean managed to shoot her full of salt.

Sam's left shoulder got dislocated when he crashed into the sturdy aluminum siding, and then it turned out Dean didn't have the slightest idea how to pop it back into place.

"Come on, Dean," Sam said, back in their motel room, gritting his teeth around the pain. "You've done this a million damn times."

"I have?" Dean said, looking shocked. "Dude, what kind of lives do we lead? I had no idea ghost hunting could be so – violent."

"We led very violent lives, Dean!" Sam bellowed, and Dean backed up a step, like he thought Sam might clock him one. It was tempting; his shoulder hurt like a bitch.

He sucked in a deep breath and tried to be calm. "Dean, here, put your hand right here, and your other hand – that's right, now pull with this one and push with that one." 

Dean's hands were trembling a little, and they lacked the confidence they always had whenever Dean touched Sam, but they were warm and strong, and that was enough right now.

Dean pushed and pulled at Sam's shoulder the way Sam told him to and seemed totally astonished that it actually worked. 

"I don't think I want to have to do that again," he said, his eyes a little wild and his face pale.

"I don't think I want you to have to do that again," Sam retorted, only feeling a little bad when Dean looked offended.

"Hey, I've never done that before, I think I handled it pretty damn well." Dean sank down on the end of the bed he'd claimed for his own, his pallor replaced with a flush of indignation.

Christ. "You've done it before, Dean, lots of times." Sam didn't mean to snap, but he couldn't help it. Pain made him cranky.

"But I don't remember it!"

"No shit! I'm well aware that you don't remember me, Dean. Believe me, I got the memo." Sam flexed the fingers on his left hand. He wished he could take a Vicodin, but that was going to have to wait until later, when he could sleep.

Dean looked puzzled. "I didn’t say I don't remember you, Sam, I said I don't remember fixing your shoulder."

"But you don't remember me, Dean. You don't remember anything about me." Sam dug around in his bag for the ibuprofen.

"I remember -"

Sam said, more harshly than he'd intended, "You remember a baby, Dean. You remember a baby from when you were barely old enough to carry me out of the fi- " He stopped. That was a slip he hadn't intended to make. He tossed back a couple of Advils, swallowing them dry.

"Carry you out of where, Sammy?"

"When the fire – when Mom – you carried me out of the house. It was burning, and Dad tried to save Mom, and you carried me out of the house." Sam watched Dean's face. He remembered Dean telling him how he'd carried him out of the fire, and now here he was, telling Dean. It was the foundation of the relationship they'd had for most of their lives, and Dean had no recollection of it.

"I did?" Dean looked awed. "I saved you?"

"Yeah, Dean, you saved me." It was the first time, but it sure as hell wasn't the last. "You've been saving me ever since."

"Wow." And wasn't that the understatement of the year.

Sam sighed and rubbed at his sore shoulder. "Let's get moving. Lydia's bones aren't going to burn themselves."

Sam's abused shoulder muscles were on fire by the time they'd gotten Lydia's grave dug up and her casket opened. Sam hated the ones who had only recently died. They smelled horrible, and their bodies took forever to burn. These days it made him feel queasy, as if there were times he'd done this that he didn't quite remember. 

He imagined there were memories of Hell, dimmed and diminished by Cas but still rattling around in his brain. He was grateful not to remember some of the more horrific things he'd experienced in his life - and death, and it stuck him that Dean losing his memory could in some ways be looked at as a gift. A blessing and a mercy.

Sam poured lighter fluid over the corpse and handed Dean a book of matches. 

"You like this part – or you used to, anyway," Sam said. 

Dean took the matches from him. He looked down at the grave, then lit the matches and threw them in. As he watched the flames, a delighted grin spread across his face.

Sam's stomach swooped, watching him. It was like coming home to see Dean's face in the light of the fire, shadows dancing and flickering across the planes and angles of it.

"I told you I would be awesome at this, Sammy," Dean said smugly.

"Yeah, Dean, you did," Sam agreed.

Sam stayed in the shower forever, letting the hot water beat down on him and wash away all the dirt and sweat, easing the tension and soreness in his shoulder that reached to his very bones. 

When he came out of the bathroom, he saw that Dean had used the time to bring back something to eat.

It was late, and Sam was exhausted, but he realized as he looked at the sandwiches and French fries spread out on the tiny laminated table between the beds that he was also starving.

He dragged on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, conscious of Dean's eyes on him as he tossed his towel back into the bathroom, then sank gratefully down onto the bed.

"Thanks, dude, I'm starving." Sam reached for the French fries.

"Is everything that's supernatural evil?" Dean asked with his mouth full of hamburger. "I mean, are there any good ghosts?"

Sam thought about the question, thought about what the answer should be. He shook his head _no._

"We had a friend once," he finally said, a handful of fries halfway to his mouth. "His name was Bobby." He put the fries down.

Sam knew in his heart that when they got to Heaven, whenever that happened, Bobby would be waiting at Harvelle's for them, surrounded by Ellen and Jo and Ash and all the people they'd loved. He thought Dean had felt the same, although they never talked about it. It was something to cling to, a hope that made life more easy to bear.

It wasn't something he could talk about with this Dean, though, any more than he could with the old Dean.

Dean was watching him curiously, and Sam shook his head. "I – Bobby loved us. He – when he died, he tried to stay here. He wanted to help us do something very important." Sam smiled. "But mostly he loved us and didn't want to leave us. Reapers make a habit of telling people that once they make a choice to go or stay they can't change their minds, but that's just reaper bullshit. They walk the company line as much as the next worker drone, and there's always a way."

He saw Dean was staring at him, a mixture of curiosity and disbelief on his face. "Reapers?"

"Uh, yeah, sorry, they're – you know what? The details aren't important. Bobby loved us and even when he was a ghost, he tried to do the right thing."

Sam suddenly missed Bobby fiercely. He would have given a lot to have Bobby here with them now. Then Sam wouldn't be the only one who remembered. Sighing, he picked up the fries again.

"So, no," he said slowly. "Not everything supernatural is evil. Most are, though."

They finished eating in silence. Dean grabbed the TV remote and started channel surfing. Sam let the snippets of sounds wash over him, the various shows and commercials barely registering. He was exhausted, sore and tired in more than muscle and bone.

Looking over at Dean, Sam watched his face as he concentrated on the images on the screen. There was interest there, and delight, like he was discovering something for the very first time. Sam figured he probably was.

"Hey, Sammy, I remember this show. Charlie Sheen was awesome." Dean grinned over at Sam, and Sam rolled his eyes.

Of course Dean would remember _Two and a Half Men._ The level of smuttiness was right up his alley.

Sam felt a fierce rush of affection wash over him, and an aching _want_ that stole his breath away. Dean was _right there_ , but it felt like was miles away.

He crawled under the covers, turning on his side and settling with his back to Dean. 

"'Night, Dean," he said and closed his eyes.

"'Night, Sammy," Dean replied. 

Sam fell asleep to the sound of Dean's laughter at his ridiculous TV show.

*

"I had a dream last night, Sammy."

Sam felt a surge of hope. "What was it about?"

"There was a guy, tall, although not as tall as you." He snickered. "Well, most people aren't. Anyway, he had dark hair, blue eyes. He was wearing a trench coat, covered in blood. Is that a real memory? It felt like it might be."

Sam nodded. "Castiel. He was - he was a friend."

"Why was he covered in blood?"

Which time, Sam wanted to ask. "Castiel spent a lot of his time on Earth covered in blood," Sam responded, smiling a little.

"Come again? That makes no sense, Sam." Dean frowned at him.

"Castiel was an angel, Dean."

"A what?"

"An angel. There was a war in Heaven –" Sam broke off. "You know, I think it's good that you remembered him. He was important to you. To us. But I think it's best if maybe you remember the rest yourself."

"That bad, huh, Sammy?" 

"I –"

"It's okay. I've sort of gathered that our lives haven't exactly been sunshine and roses." He had a dark look in his eyes that reminded Sam too much of the Dean he'd been before the accident. It was a look Sam hadn't missed at all.

Sam thought about Dean before, and then thought about how he was now. The burden of guilt was lifted, and maybe it was worth it to never have him remember if it meant he could live without the compulsion to carry the pain with him for the rest of his life.

Maybe it was okay if Sam carried it for him.

*

"Sam?" Sam came out of the bathroom and saw Dean sitting on their bed. It gave him the usual pang to see him there without knowing that's where he belonged.

"Hey," he said.

"What's this?" Dean held up the picture Bobby had taken of the two of them leaning against the Impala. What the hell was Dean doing digging around in the dresser?

"It's just a picture," he said shortly, reaching to take it out of Dean's hands.

Dean pulled it back. "I don't understand. This picture, it looks like we're – and I found it in with a bunch of stuff that makes it look like this was my room, or something."

Sam stood there, feeling numb and foolish. Terrified. He wanted Dean to remember how they were, but if he wasn't going to, then Sam never wanted him to find out. Dean still sometimes thought like the child of four he remembered being, and Sam couldn't imagine what his reaction would be to the news that he and Sam fucked each other on a regular basis.

"Why would I sleep in here? Did I sleep in here with you? Isn't this _your_ room? I don't understand, Sammy." Dean looked like a puzzled child, the crease between his eyebrows making Sam's stomach drop.

Sam just looked back at him. He knew whatever was showing on his face did enough to give him away without him have to say anything. His heart beat so loudly in his ears he almost didn't hear Dean's next words.

"You've got to be kidding me. That's – are we not really brothers, Sam? Is that it? Are we in some kind of, of _relationship?_ " 

The way he said _relationship_ as if it were the most horrifying thing in the world made Sam want to throw up.

But there was his out. He could tell Dean they were boyfriends and not really brothers. Dean might freak out about that, but not as much as if he thought they were brothers in some kind of gay, incestuous fling.

There was no way he could ever make Dean understand about that. How it had happened, why. What their lives had been like to bring them to that point.

He didn't think Dean trusted him enough for that.

There weren't enough sociology texts in the world to explain it. Or Abnormal Psych books, more likely.

But that would mean denying Dean as his brother, and that was so much more important than the rest of it. Something that couldn’t be separated from the rest, not really, no matter what Dean would think about it.

Besides, Dean remembered him, even if it was only as a baby. He couldn't deny the only memory of him Dean had.

Dean stared at him, shock clear on his face.

"What the hell, are you shitting me? What did you – we – and I went along with this?" His voice was flat and his eyes were deadly.

This was worse than any pain Sam had felt in Hell. Lucifer had forced Sam to torture Dean, but he'd never been able to make Dean turn away from him. Nothing Sam had ever done, in life or in death, had managed that.

But now Dean turned away in disgust and anger, and Sam was left standing in the doorway of their bedroom, alone.

[](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/382/110438)

"I don't understand why being your brother isn't enough for you, Sam."

"It is," Sam said. He knew how transparent his lie was.

"Bullshit," Dean said angrily. "You want the other guy back, the one who remembers you, the one who _fucks_ you."

"The one I'm in love with," Sam said. There was really no point in lying, he guessed.

"I can be your brother, but you're going to have to find someone else to fuck." Dean said.

"Stop saying that! It wasn't just fucking. I love you! You love me!" Sam looked away, not wanting to see the revulsion on Dean's face. "You loved me," he whispered.

"I can't fucking do this," Dean said.

They ate dinner in silence. Sam made fried chicken and mashed potatoes, with green beans and apple pie. He hadn't planned on it, he wasn't trying to win Dean over with food or anything, but that's what he made.

Dean picked at his chicken, made designs in the potatoes with his fork, and fed Daisy the green beans, handing them to her one at a time as she sat next to his chair, her head on his knee

He ignored the pie completely.

"I'm not trying to win your love through dinner, asshole," Sam muttered as Dean pushed his chair back and got up from the table. "You can eat the damn pie."

"I'm not hungry," Dean said, walking over and opening the back door. "Come on Daisy, let's go for a walk."

Dean disappeared upstairs as soon as he and Daisy came in. Daisy wandered into the living room and took her turn with Sam, resting her head on his knee, looking at him with sad and reproachful eyes.

"I'm sorry, girl," Sam said. "I don’t know what I'm supposed to do."

He fell asleep on the couch, waking up in the morning stiff and sore. 

They fell into a kind of pattern, their days taking on the shape of one of Sam's nightmares. It wasn't that they didn't speak, they did. Dean said things like "pass the salt" and "do you want more coffee" and "I need the car this afternoon."

It was enough to make Sam want to cut out his tongue so he didn't have to answer.

Daisy was clearly unhappy. She stopped eating unless Dean sat on the kitchen floor with her, coaxing her with bits of dog food and whatever leftovers he could find.

Sam felt like a ghost in his own life, drifting through unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged. He worked for a few hours in the morning and then did whatever chores needed to be done around the house.

He went back to his computer in the afternoon, editing the articles submitted to the magazine, creating indexes for books he'd never read.

He always made supper, made sure there was a hot meal on the table when Dean came home from work, like some kind of 1950s housewife. Dean always ate, always thanked Sam for it when he was done, as he stood up to take Daisy outside for their nightly walk.

He never failed to make Sam feel as if he were the most despicable being on the planet with the way he almost shook with the effort it took to stay in the same room with him long enough to eat a meal together.

When Dean and Daisy came back in, usually at dusk, Dean would head straight upstairs to his room, leaving Daisy to offer what comfort she was able while Sam stared sightlessly at the television until he fell into a restless sleep.

It was worse than Hell.

Sam tried not to actually look at his face when he shaved in the morning. His skin was pale and sallow, with dark bruised circles under his eyes. His hair was lank and lifeless, and if he didn't know any better, Sam would think he had some kind of Lifetime movie disease.

He almost didn't blame himself for wishing he did. If he were sick, if he were dying, Dean would have to talk to him. He'd feel bad, he'd feel sorry he'd treated Sam this way for something that wasn't his fault, and he'd be sorry when Sam was dead.

Jesus Christ. Sam dropped his head, hitting the mirror with his forehead multiple times, until he knocked some sense back into himself. 

That was the most maudlin, the most self-pitying train of thought he'd ever indulged in. It beat the things he used to think about when he was thirteen, hoping he'd get hurt on a hunt so that his father would be sorry.

He'd sit in the back of the Impala as they drove, seething with resentment and half-listening to John and Dean up in front, his father making pronouncements and judgments, issuing commands and demands, while Dean eagerly took it all in, agreed with him, deferred to him, apologized and idolized him.

Sam would make up scenarios in his head, about hunts gone wrong, with Sam being bitten by a werewolf or pushed down the stairs by a poltergeist. 

His father would rush to him, devastated as he realized that he would have to kill Sam before he turned into a werewolf himself, or screaming for Dean to help him get Sam to the car, to get him safely to the hospital to treat his bruised and broken body.

When he was really angry, he'd daydream about John making a mistake on a hunt, something that would result in Sam being injured, being badly hurt. 

Or that maybe one of the times that John and Dean left Sam alone while they ran off to play hero, the monster would come to get Sam while they were away. 

Sam always killed the monster, but he would be grievously injured in the process, and then John's remorse knew no bounds.

Sam always forgave him, before he passed out or died, sometimes before John had to shoot him in the heart with a silver bullet while Dean cried and pleaded with him to spare Sam's life.

It was a satisfying way to pass the tedium of long road trips, and probably went a long way toward allowing Sam to maintain a modicum of civility when dealing with John.

And now he was embarrassed to find himself doing the same thing with Dean. _He'll be sorry when I'm gone_ became _He'll feel like a real asshole if I have cancer or something._

But even Sam wasn't a big enough bastard to make himself feel better with thoughts of how bad Dean would feel if Sam died. They'd both been through that more than enough times, and his mind shied away from the very idea.

*

It was almost a week after Dean figured out the part of their relationship that Sam missed the most but wanted Dean to know about the least, when Sam woke up to the sound of Dean screaming.

Ted had said some of Dean's memories could return in his dreams, and that was true. Dean seemed to have nebulous dreams, recalling bits and pieces of events, sometimes a person, a face, a name.

But this sounded as if Hell had returned in full force, and Sam heaved himself to his feet and hit the stairs running.

Dean was sitting straight up in bed, the covers pooled around his waist. Tears streamed down his face, and his hands covered his ears. 

"No, no, noooooo," he moaned, and Sam hurried over to the bed, fitting himself behind Dean and putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Dean," he said, "Dean, come on, man, wake up. Wake up, Dean, come on."

It was a few minutes, but Dean finally took his hands away from his ears, lowering them to rest motionless in his lap. Sam kept rubbing his shoulder, slowly and rhythmically, feeling his brother tremble under his hands.

Dean gave one last shudder and gasped, "Sam?"

"Yeah, Dean, it's me." Helping each other through these dreams had become something they'd just gotten in the way of doing over the past few years. Dean had given up hiding his dreams, denying them, a long time ago. There was no reason to be embarrassed, not in front of each other. 

The dreams weren't going to go away, so they might as well deal.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Sam asked. Usually Dean didn't share the details, and neither did Sam. Neither one of them needed to know the finer points of the time the other spent in Hell.

But this was new to Dean, and Sam imagined he had no idea what it was all about.

Dean shuddered again. "I was tied to a rack, and there was a man, a man with black eyes. He cut – he had a knife, a thin blade, and he sliced into me, he was carving –" and suddenly Dean doubled over and threw up over the side of the bed. It spattered on the hardwood floor, the sharp acrid smell reaching Sam and making him gag in sympathy.

"Sam," Dean said, panic in his voice. Sam moved out of the way, let Dean rush for the bathroom. He followed behind, stepping around Dean as he crouched in front of the toilet, retching again and again. Sam grabbed a towel and took it back to Dean's room.

He tossed the towel over the puddle of vomit, tempted to just leave it until morning, but knowing he would be sorry if he did. Trying not to breathe, he mopped up the mess and then took the towel down to the washing machine in the basement, dumping in a cup of detergent and switching on the machine.

When he got back upstairs, Dean was still huddled over the toilet. Sam filled the bathroom glass with water and offered it to him.

"Here, rinse," he instructed.

Dean rinsed and spit, and Sam reached over him to flush the toilet. He put toothpaste on Dean's toothbrush and grabbed his elbow, helping him to his feet. 

"You done?"

Dean nodded. Sam handed him his toothbrush.

"Go on."

Sam knew enough about what happened to Dean in Hell to recognize Alistair in Dean's dream, to know what he'd done to Dean, over and over, again and again. Sam would have given anything for Dean not to remember this.

When Dean finished brushing his teeth, Sam guided him into his room - _their_ room, shaking his head when Dean protested, pulling toward his own room.

"It stinks in there, dude," Sam said, trying to keep it light. The last thing Dean needed right now was for Sam to show how upset he was.

Dean hesitated, and then he allowed Sam to lead him to the bed. He sank down on the edge, resting his elbows on his knees. 

Sam let him sit there while he dragged a pair of dirty jeans and a crumpled up t-shirt off the bed and tossed them on a chair. He straightened the pillows, uselessly fluffing them.

Finally Dean raised his head. "You know what that was all about, don't you?" He sounded accusing. "What I was dreaming about?"

Sam hesitated, and then nodded. "Yeah, Dean, I do," he admitted.

Dean stared at Sam for a long moment, and then he said, "Tell me."

Sam stared back helplessly. "Dean –"

Dean shook his head. "No, Sam. Tell me. I need to know."

"You really don't," Sam said, but he sat down on the side of the bed opposite Dean, swinging his legs up and scooting back until he was leaning against the headboard. He spoke to the back of Dean's head.

"You were dreaming about Hell. You were there."

Dean went very still, and Sam wished he could see his face, wished he hadn't situated himself behind him. He hoped that was enough, that Dean only needed that basic bit of information. He'd rather not tell Dean the details.

"Why was I in Hell?" Dean sounded hoarse, like his voice had been shredded, and Sam winced.

"You…you made a deal with a demon."

Dean turned to look at Sam, his face full of horror. "Why would I do that?"

"Because I died," Sam said in a whisper. "I died and you made a deal to bring me back."

"A deal to go to _Hell?_ For how long? How – how did I get out? How do deals with _demons_ work, Sam?" Dean's voice had risen steadily as he spoke, and he was practically shouting when he reached Sam's name.

"You were there a year. Castiel pulled you out." At Dean's blank expression, Sam added, "Dude in the trench coat. Angel, remember?"

"I made a deal with a demon to save your life, I went to Hell for a year, and then an angel in a trench coat pulled me out." Dean scrambled off the bed and started pacing. "Have I got that right?"

Sam nodded. "I'm sorry," he said, although he had no idea what he was apologizing for. He guessed he was sorry that Dean had remembered. It was bad enough when they lived through this crap the first time, having to relive it by watching Dean remember it one excruciating detail at a time was a particularly horrific form of torture.

Maybe this was happening because Sam's recollections of Lucifer and his own time in Hell were so muted that the universe had decided he hadn't suffered enough and had devised this new fresh hell just for him.

But that was ridiculous, because the "universe" was God and Castiel was God's right-hand man these days, and Sam didn't think he would do that.

"I – I gotta go," Dean said, and he turned and left the bedroom. Sam could hear him clattering down the stairs, heard him in the kitchen, searching in the refrigerator, probably for a beer. 

If this didn't make Dean start drinking the hard stuff again, nothing would. 

Sam scrubbed his hands over his face and made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Who was he kidding, there were so many more things that would make Dean stay drunk for days if he remembered them.

*

Dean was still quiet after that, but the whole _unclean!_ vibe was gone. The relief Sam felt once he figured that out was so overwhelming he almost couldn't breathe.

"So," Dean said around a mouthful of spaghetti one night, "I guess our lives were kind of shitty." There was so much sadness in his eyes, and Sam swallowed. Dean looked as if he desperately wanted Sam to deny all the crap that had happened to them. Sam really wished he could.

"It wasn't all bad," Sam said. That was true. "We had fun a lot of the time, we had good friends. We had each other –" he stopped, knowing that was the wrong thing to say. 

Dean was watching him with sharp eyes.

Sam shrugged. "Not just – like that." He actually felt heat rise in his cheeks. He hadn't blushed in years, he didn't think, and he certainly hadn't blushed around Dean in a very long time.

Sam sighed. "Look, Dean. Mom died, we went on the road with Dad. He taught us how to hunt. We met some folks along the way, but most of them aren't around much anymore. They're mostly dead. Some bad shit happened, but there were good times, we did some good things, we saved a lot of people along the way." He paused, then said, "Dude, you really used to like to hunt, back before all the shit hit the fan. Like when we went to Pittsburgh last month." 

He wasn't looking at Dean, didn't want to see whatever expression was on his face. "And in the past few years, things have settled down. God came back, Cas is up there with him, Hell's been on lockdown for a while now. There are fewer monsters these days. You and I, we've been living here pretty peacefully." He looked at Dean for this last part, he had to look him in the eye when he said it. "It's been nice."

Dean looked steadily back at him for a moment, and then nodded.

Sam counted that as progress.

*

Sam missed the car. He felt its loss like a severed limb. It represented home and safety and _Dean_ to him, and now Dean didn't even care. 

He nagged a little, poked at Dean about it.

"What the hell, Sam? Why do I have to care about the car? It's a wreck, it's old, what am I supposed to do about it?" Dean seemed more irritated than anything by Sam's prodding. Like it wasn't important enough to get pissed over.

"It's my home," Sam said, anger boiling inside. "It was my home, and it was your home, even if you don't remember it, and you took it away from me!"

"I didn't do it on purpose! Stop blaming me, I'm trying to remember." Dean was pale now, his fists clenched at his sides.

"Well, try harder, Dean!" Sam was goading Dean, trying to provoke him past quiet avoidance.

"Fuck you!" Dean's eyes blazed with anger now. Good. "I have no clue how to do this. I don't know what you want from me!"

"I want you to remember!" Sam jabbed his finger at his own chest. "I want you to remember _me!"_

"You think I don't want to? You think I can't see how bad you want the old Dean back?" Dean's anger seemed to disappear, to be replaced by a terrible sadness. "I'm not stupid, I know I'm not who you want."

Sam's own anger rushed out of him, leaving him weak and sick. "No, Dean, no, I'm –" he reached a hand out, but let it fall when Dean turned away. "Dean –"

"Forget it, Sammy. It's fine. I’m going to bed." Dean climbed the stairs like an old man, tired and defeated looking.

Sam felt like the biggest piece of shit alive.

*

Sam was in the kitchen, putting groceries away. Dean had taken Daisy for a walk down to the creek that ran along the north side of the field behind their house. He'd been doing that a lot lately, and once or twice, Sam had seen him take a fishing pole with him.

There weren't any fish in that creek, although there was a stocked pond about five miles down the road where Dean had sometimes gone to fish, before. Sam kept meaning to tell Dean that, but he hadn't yet. He wasn't sure if he just kept forgetting, or if he hoped Dean would remember on his own.

Sam had his head in the refrigerator when Dean and Daisy came in. The screen door banged shut and Dean said, "Was there a, a necklace of some kind, Sam? Did you give me – I remember something –"

Dean trailed off, and Sam turned startled eyes to his face, narrowly missing hitting his head on the freezer door.

Daisy woofed impatiently, and Dean reached to get her a dog treat. Mud covered his boots, and the bottoms of his jeans were wet. His hair was soft and messy looking, and freckles stood out on his skin, pink from the afternoon sun.

Sam was struck by how miraculous it was to see Dean standing in front of him, after everything, whole and healthy. How lucky they both were, and how ungrateful he was that it didn't feel like enough.

He felt ashamed that he'd given Dean the idea that who he was now wasn't what Sam wanted, what Sam would always want.

Some part of that must have shown on his face, because Dean cocked his head at Sam, and then his lips quirked in a half-smile.

"What?" Sam said. He wasn't even sure what Dean had just asked him, he'd lost it in the rush of feelings that had come over him.

"A necklace – a pendant of some sort. It was on a leather cord. I keep seeing you hand it to me, wrapped in newspaper? Is that real? Did that happen?"

Sam didn't trust himself to speak, so he just nodded. 

"You gave it to me?" Dean persisted.

Clearing his throat, Sam said, "Yeah. Yeah, Dean, I gave it to you. We were just kids. I – it meant a lot." He wasn't going to say anything else. If Dean didn't remember anything else about the amulet other than the fact that Sam gave it to him, well, Sam thought that was the best thing he could hope for. 

That was more than enough.

"Where is it now?" Dean asked. "I haven't seen it in my stuff." He waved vaguely toward the bedrooms overhead.

"Um, it's gone? I mean, a few years ago, it just –" Sam broke off. He shook his head, praying that Dean would let it go, be satisfied with the little bit of information Sam gave him. He was usually pretty content not to dig beneath the surface on a lot of things. Oftentimes, details were more than he wanted to know.

"That's cool," Dean said. He gestured at his mud-covered boots and wet jeans. "I'm gonna go clean up."

Sam was lucky this time.

*

Sam finally convinced Dean to go look at the Impala again on a sunny Saturday morning in May. 

"You wanna tell me why this is so important to you, Sam?" Dean asked him quietly as he shut Daisy in the house. "We'll be back soon, sweetheart," he said as he pulled the door closed.

Sam stopped walking and turned to look at his brother. "I told you, after Mom died, we moved around a lot. We lived in shitty motel rooms and crappy apartments and run-down trailers. Sometimes we stayed with – well, with friends. Bobby. We changed schools every five minutes, it seemed like."

"You didn't like that," Dean said, watching him closely. "It made you angry."

Sam's heart thudded at the realization that Dean could read him so well. They'd been almost strangers just a few short months ago. But even without his memories, Dean knew Sam.

Sam turned to hide the sudden heat in his face and kept walking toward his car. He slid behind the wheel and waited for Dean to get in, waited for him to buckle his seatbelt and get settled before he said, "No, I didn't like it. But the car, that was our constant. The only thing that was always there. Even Dad, Dad was gone a lot, off hunting things before we were old enough to hunt with him."

Sam shrugged. Dean looked at him as if he was trying to solve a mystery. "The car was where we lived, at least emotionally." And Sam waited for Dean to make fun of him for being so sappy, but then he remembered that this was a different Dean, a Dean who had no cause to be so hard, so cynical. This was a Dean who was undamaged, except for the few things he'd remembered so far.

And of course the whole _fucking his brother_ thing. That wasn't at all damaging, really.

But Dean seemed to be dealing with that, at least for the time being. Right now he actually seemed interested in what Sam had to tell him about the car.

Once again Charlie came out to greet them. Dean seemed more relaxed than the last time they came to see the car. More interested and engaged in why they were here.

"Hey, Charlie," he said, as if Charlie were someone he actually knew. 

"Dean," Charlie said. "Good to see you again."

The three of them went inside, to the bay in the back of the garage where Sam had been paying to keep the car since the accident.

"No pressure," he said to Dean. "But she's going to start to rust where she's banged up if we don't get her fixed up soon."

Dean seemed more involved than the last time San had dragged him here. He slowly walked around the car, touching the places where she was broken with gentle hands. 

Sam felt tears prickle at the back of his eyes as he watched Dean, but he couldn't turn away. Let Dean catch him, he didn't care.

Dean straightened up from his inspection of the engine and looked at Sam. "I don't know how."

"You've done it before. More than once." Sam held his breath, trying not to push.

"What if I don't remember? What if I screw it up?" Dean sounded so unsure, and Sam wanted him to know he couldn't screw it up, no matter what happened, if he'd only try.

"You won't," Sam said with confidence, hardly daring to hope.

Dean nodded. He turned to Charlie and said, "Could you help me? I mean, if I decide to work on her a little?"

Sam's heart soared. Not at Dean's half-promise to fix the car, but at the way he'd called the car "her." It was the first time he'd done it, and the fact that he didn't seem to even realize it made Sam feel better than he had in weeks.

Charlie said _sure_ and they spent the next half hour talking about what needed to be done.

*

But in the days that passed, Dean didn't spend any time at the garage, as far as Sam could tell. He came home from work, dusty and tired, pretty much on time every day. Ron came over after work for a beer or two a couple of times a week, and they just hung out.

Sam didn't want to ask. Things between them were going pretty smoothly right now, and he didn't want to rock the boat. 

"Hey," Dean said, poking his head into Sam's bedroom one night. "Can I borrow a clean t-shirt? Mine are all dirty."

"Yeah, sure," Sam said. He had no idea whether to get up and get a shirt for Dean, or whether to just let him rummage around in the dresser and get one himself.

"Um, where -" Dean asked after it became apparent that Sam wasn't getting up.

"Oh, sorry," Sam said, jumping up and pulling open the top drawer of his dresser. He was shirtless himself, which made him unaccountably nervous. It was silly; Dean wasn't going to think he was trying to seduce him because he was half-naked. This was Sam's room, after all. 

He grabbed a shirt and thrust it blindly at Dean. "Here."

"Thanks." Dean stood for a moment, staring at Sam, an appraising look in his eye. He actually looked a little surprised, or something; Sam couldn't tell for sure what that particular expression meant. He thought maybe he liked it.

"'Night, Sam." 

"'Night, Dean," Sam said, but Dean was already gone.

Sinking slowly back down on the bed, Sam realized maybe it had been appreciation he'd seen on Dean's face.

*

And then Sam had another nightmare.

Most of the time when Sam dreamed, they were nebulous dreams, where Sam was in pain, or Lucifer was taunting him in some way, but the details were never very clear. Remnants of the wall, Sam supposed.

But when the dreams involved Dean, they were as sharp and clear as they could be. Sam didn't have to be a genius to grasp the psychological underpinnings of that.

This dream was about Dean. 

Sam found himself on a lonely country road. It was dark and cold, the asphalt icy under his feet. Trees surrounded him, their branches knocking together in the wind.

Up ahead, snow swirled thickly, visible in the headlights of a car. The beams of light tilted slightly upward, and the snow mesmerized Sam as he walked, heavy flakes dancing in the wind and then disappearing into the darkness beyond the lights.

He approached the car cautiously. Its rear end was in a ditch, and the gleaming black front end was raised a few feet off the ground. The tires were still spinning, rotating uselessly in the frigid air.

A man slumped in the driver's seat, his head resting on the steering wheel. Sam didn't want to look, didn't want to see who it was, although he already knew. There was an unnatural twist to the man's shoulders, to his neck. Dread nearly overwhelmed Sam, and he wanted nothing more than to turn and run away. Away from what he knew he would find.

He was close to the car now, close enough to reach in through the broken window and touch the man trapped inside. Putting a hand on the shoulder that jutted toward him, he pushed gently.

The body was cold and stiff, and it fell away from the steering wheel and back against the seat.

Bile rose in Sam's throat and a scream clawed to get out. Dean's lifeless face was frozen in a rictus of pain and terror. Blood had run from a gash on his forehead and congealed in smears that shone black in the light reflected around him.

Sam fell back, stumbling and slipping on the icy pavement. "Noooo, noooo, Dean," he cried.

Hands gripped his arms, shaking him. He struggled to get away, still screaming his brother's name. "Dean!"

"Sam! Sam, wake up! Sam! Sammy!" There were hands on his shoulders, in his hair, moving up and down his arms. The back of his neck was held in a firm grip, and a frantic voice said in his ear, "Sammy, wake up, come on, it's okay."

His name, over and over in that particular voice, finally penetrated the last of the nightmare. Sam blinked, shook his head, and whispered, "I'm okay."

Dean – a living, breathing Dean – kept his hands on Sam's shoulders as he said, "Dude, you back with me now?" He sounded completely freaked out, and Sam made an effort to pull himself back together.

"No, I'm fine, I'm good," he said. He gave a little gasp, and coughed once or twice. "I'm good."

Dean peered at him uncertainly, then seemed to become aware of the way he was holding onto Sam. He pulled back, took his hands off Sam, and Sam had to make a conscious effort not to follow him, not to lean into the comfort Dean's body offered, even if Dean's stupid broken brain wasn't on board with that.

Sam looked away. He could see in Dean's expression that he cared about Sam's distress, but not in the way Sam was used to, or in the way he needed him to.

Scooting further away from Dean, Sam leaned back against the headboard. He was drenched in sweat, and his t-shirt stuck to his chest uncomfortably. 

Dean got up off the bed, and Sam's heart sank. He wished Dean would stay for just a little longer. "Dean…"

Dean held up a hand. "Hang on, Sammy." He disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a towel. Tossing it at Sam, he said, "Get out of that shirt." He grabbed a clean shirt out of Sam's dresser and turned to hand it to him. "I know where you keep your clothes now, dude."

Sam nodded and stripped off his damp shirt. He mopped at the sweat on his chest and stomach and then pulled the clean shirt on over his head. Emerging, he tried to smile. "Thanks."

Dean stood next to the bed watching him, looking like he wanted to say something but not knowing how. Sam raised his eyebrows.

"Are you okay, Sam? Are your dreams always so – I don't know, so bad?"

 _Bad_ was probably the most inadequate word Sam could associate with the things he dreamed about, and he shook his head. "You could say that. Well, sometimes they're less…powerful. Sometimes they're…faded, kind of." He shrugged. Dean used to know this about him and didn't make him talk about it.

"When they're bad…do I…how do I…what can I do to help?" Dean finally managed to say.

Sam shook his head. "It's fine. I'm fine."

Dean snorted. "You're so not fine, Sammy. I feel like – I mean, when I had that one really bad nightmare, you were – I just feel like –"

Sam took pity on him. "We don’t usually talk about it. I mean, we already know what we dream about, and we don't need to talk about it."

"So, what then?" Dean looked determined, and that struck Sam as incredibly brave, somehow. It made him feel such _affection_ for Dean that his eyes prickled.

He looked at his brother. "You really want to know?" Sam needed to make himself clear, let Dean know what he was asking. "You probably don't want the details," he warned.

Dean flushed but he met Sam's eyes. "I can handle it."

Sam smiled a little, saying, "Really? You sure about that?"

"Give me a break here, Sammy. It was – I didn't expect it, that was all." Dean glanced away and then back, looking directly at Sam. "I'm – I'm sorry about before."

"Okay," Sam said, surprised. "I – I mean –"

"Yeah, yeah," Dean said, sitting down next to Sam. "Just shut up and tell me what to do." 

Sam ruthlessly pushed down the rush of hope Dean's words brought. "Well, for one thing, we're usually in the same bed when it happens." He held up his hands before Dean could react. "You want to know, and I'll tell you. Just – don't freak out again." He waited for Dean's nod before he continued.

Sam didn't think he'd ever felt so self-conscious in his life. Not because he was embarrassed at the things he was telling Dean, but because Dean was looking at him with such trepidation. Taking a deep breath, Sam said, "You – we – you hold on, hold on to me. Like, like a hug." Oh god, he sounded like he was twelve years old.

Dean must have thought so, too, because Sam could see the beginning of a smirk on his face.

"Go on," he said.

"I'm glad you find this so entertaining," Sam said. "So, we spoon, we snuggle, sometimes we make out, sometimes we fuck," he said in a rush, watching Dean's expression closely.

"Sorry," he added, "But it's true. And you asked."

"That I did," Dean conceded. "I really did." He took a deep breath, studying Sam's face. 

Sam was pretty much over his nightmare by now. Losing Dean in a dream wasn't any more terrifying than losing him in real life. Not that he thought he'd lose him over this, but he couldn't help being anxious. He should have kept his mouth shut, told Dean that he made him hot chocolate or something. Not that they sometimes fucked. What the hell was he thinking? 

Distracted by his thoughts, Sam didn't notice that Dean had crawled into bed with him until he felt him put a tentative arm around his waist, pulling him down and more or less manhandling him until he was on his side and Dean was spooned behind him. 

"What –"

"Shut up, Sammy," Dean said. He tucked his knees behind Sam's bent ones, and his breath was hot on the back of Sam's neck. 

Sam wanted to protest, to tell Dean he didn't have to do this. He wanted to tell him not to do this unless he meant it, but Dean tightened his arms, so Sam didn't say anything. He concentrated on breathing instead.

The images from his dream came back unbidden then. The dark road, the swirling snow. Dean's bloody face, his sightless eyes. Sam's breathing sped up, and his heart felt suddenly as if it was going to beat out of his chest.

Dean murmured something too quiet for Sam to hear and began to slowly move his hand, stroking Sam's chest, his stomach, up and down. He breathed deep and regular, and Sam tried to breath with him. He shuddered once, and Dean murmured again. This time Sam heard the words.

"It's okay, Sammy. I'm not going anywhere."

Somehow Dean, this Dean who Sam thought didn't know him at all, who didn't know anything about their lives beyond what Sam had told him, somehow this Dean had put his finger on Sam's deepest fear.

It surprised him, although maybe it shouldn't have. That was Dean, and it had always been Dean.

It gave Sam great comfort to think this Dean knew him so well, and when he finally fell asleep, it was to the feel of Dean's heartbeat against his back and the sound of his breath in his ear.

*

They didn't talk about it the next morning, or the day after that. It didn't feel like they were avoiding anything, it just felt like it was a perfectly normal thing to have happened.

Sam was grateful for that.

Dean started showing up in Sam's bedroom at odd times. He was either looking for something he'd misplaced, or wondering if Daisy was in there, or telling Sam he'd made a pot of coffee and did Sam want some?

One night came in searching for the dog, and he stood in the middle of the room, looking around thoughtfully. 

"Does it – I mean, this was your room, too, not the one across the hall. Does it feel familiar in here?" Sam asked.

Dean looked at Sam and shrugged. "Maybe. It doesn't feel familiar, but it doesn't feel strange, either. It feels – I don't know, it feels comfortable in here. I like it."

"You know you can –" Sam broke off. He didn't want to push. He waved his hands around in a way meant to convey _move back in any time you want._

He didn't think he'd been particularly successful with that, but Dean smiled. "I know."

He didn't officially move back to their room, but Sam started finding Dean's boots in the corner or a shirt tossed over the back of the chair. More and more of Dean's crap started migrating across the hall, and each book or pair of dirty socks made something twist in Sam's chest. 

Something that felt dangerously like hope.

More often than not, Dean would end up falling asleep on the bed after he'd come in to watch TV with Sam in the evening. They had a small, beat-up television in there, hardly visible from the bed, but Dean insisted on springing for the full cable package, so there was always something on to watch. 

Sam wasn't much for TV these days, but Dean never, ever got tired of reruns of the shows he could remember. He'd drift off in the middle of _How I Met Your Mother,_ which seemed to be on five times a night, at least, leaving Sam beside him, laptop open but ignored. 

As soon as Dean's breathing found a regular rhythm, Sam would turn his attention to Dean, studying his face, looking for evidence to show that he was different now. That he wasn't the Dean Sam used to know.

But as hard as Sam looked, all he could see was the Dean he'd known all his life.

*

Ron called on a Friday night to see if they wanted to go bowling.

"Bowling? Have I ever been bowling, Sammy?" Dean's eyes were bright with excitement. "I bet I kick ass at it."

Sam laughed. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

Once they were ensconced in an alley, questionable shoes and cold beer in hand, Dean realized that if he'd ever been bowling, he hadn't done it often enough to pick up any actual bowling skills. 

Sam, on the other hand, had hung out with some guys during the spring of his tenth grade year who went midnight bowling every Friday night. 

It was apparently a great place to pick up girls, although Sam hadn't had much luck in that department. One of the guys – Sam thought his name was Corey – thought it was hilarious that Sam couldn't get a girl to make out with him even at midnight bowling.

"Didn't you ever go midnight bowling in high school, Dean?" Sam asked.

"Doesn't look that way, does it, Sammy?" Dean said as he cheerfully watched his ball hit the gutter halfway down the alley.

Ron had been in a league for years, so he pretty much owned them both, but that didn't stop Sam from being secretly stoked to beat his brother, even if Dean bowled like a drunk three-year old.

The place was a madhouse of sound and color. There seemed to be a lot of couples there, and everywhere Sam looked, someone was making out. 

Sam didn't think he'd choose a bowling alley to try and swallow someone's tongue, but he shrugged. To each their own, he guessed.

There was one girl, a pretty blonde with pouty red lips and a killer figure that kept throwing inviting glances in Sam's direction. He tried to ignore her, but she was obvious as fuck. Ron and Dean teased him about it, but Sam thought he saw annoyance in Dean's eyes, and maybe a little bit of a challenge there, too. 

Dean looked around the alley, loud and bright, and said, "Friday night's date night, you know." His color was heightened, but he met Sam's eyes with a steady gaze.

"I know," Sam said, not sure where this was going.

"So," Dean said, and a grin spread slowly across his face, growing wide and bright and happy. 

"So," Sam said, swallowing thickly. Dean winked and turned to pick up his ball.

"Gonna kick your ass, Ronnie," he said, throwing another gutter ball. He cackled with laughter.

"Not noticeably," Ron said.

It was one of the best nights Sam could remember having. 

And then they went home, and it got better. Sam was getting ready for bed, stripping off his shirt, when Dean came into the bedroom. 

He paused in the doorway for a moment, then moved forward and put a hand in the middle of Sam's chest. Watching the movement carefully, Dean curled his fingers, digging the tips into Sam's skin. "I figured something out, Sammy," he said. 

"Oh, yeah?" Sam said, his throat dry. "What's that?"

Dean looked up at him, his eyes intense. "You belong to me. You always have." His fingers dug in a little more. "And you already knew that, didn't you?"

Sam nodded, afraid to speak, or even breathe. 

"Does it work both ways, Sam? Do I belong to you, too?"

"Yeah, Dean," Sam whispered. "You always have."

Dean said in a satisfied voice, "I thought so."

He held Sam's gaze. "I don't remember much about the past, Sam. And the future – man, I don't know, it's not something I like to think about. I don't trust it, not really. It doesn't matter what we think about the future, anyway. It can all change just like that." He snapped the fingers of his other hand in Sam's face. "What we have is right now. That's all we've got, and I'm tired of fighting for more when I can't have it."

Sam understood it, then. He got it. Dean, right here, right now, was enough. It was everything.

Dean pushed against Sam's chest, pushing him away, and Sam made a small sound of protest. But apparently Dean was just trying to get his hand out from between them and up around to the back of Sam's neck.

He pulled Sam down and kissed him, a sweet, simple kiss that felt just like coming home. Sam sighed into it, wrapped his arms around Dean and hung on. 

Dean pulled back, leaning his forehead against Sam's.

"Is this all right?" he asked.

"Are you nuts? Of course it is," Sam said.

"Okay, then," Dean said, letting go of Sam completely and rubbing his hands together. "Show me what you like." 

"What?"

"Yeah, okay, maybe you should show me what _I_ like," Dean amended. He shot a quick glance at the bed and then chuckled nervously.

"Hey," Sam said, crossing over to the bed, grabbing Dean along the way. He gave him a little shove and Dean sat down with an "oomph," glaring up at Sam. "Relax."

Dean nodded. He looked vulnerable suddenly, sitting there waiting for Sam to show him – oh, god. 

Sam sank down on the bed next to him. "Did you like kissing me before?"

"Sure," Dean said. "Sure I did, Sammy."

"Then let's start with that. Here, get this off," Sam said, tugging on Dean's shirt.

"You're right, Sammy, I like this a lot," Dean said against Sam's mouth. 

Sam rolled them over so that Dean was on top, sliding his hands down over Dean's ass to hold him in place. He thrust his hips up, sliding his cock against Dean's, letting the warm, familiar friction work to heal the hurt the past months had brought.

Dean moved with him, against him, and it was as if they'd never lost this, not even for a little while. And for the first time since he'd heard Emmett say, "There's been an accident," Sam thought he would be able to survive this.

It was almost too much. He tore his mouth away from Dean, hid his face against Dean's neck, and came with a gasp. 

"Dean," he whispered. "Dean."

"I gotcha, Sammy," Dean said. "Always." And Dean did, Dean had him in every way that could ever mean anything.

Dean ground down against Sam, his hips moving frantically, and then he slowed and stopped, hot wetness between them.

It was a few minutes before Sam could open his eyes.

"Like riding a bicycle," Dean said proudly when he did.

"You did not just say that," Sam said. "Please tell me you didn't say that."

"No can do, Sammy." Dean grinned happily down at Sam. "I went there."

Sam smiled right back up at him. " _We_ went there, Dean."

*

It had been almost three weeks since Sam and Dean went to the garage to look at the Impala. Sam tried not to think about it, and he certainly never mentioned it.

Neither did Dean.

But still Sam wondered. Why would Dean bother dragging Sam to the garage if he weren't going to do anything about the car? Had he decided to scrap it? Sell it for parts? Sam felt sick at the idea, so he didn't ask. If that was the case, he didn't want to know.

So he tried to push it out of his mind and not drive himself crazy thinking about it. He manfully resisted the temptation to grab Dean by the neck and shout, "What are you doing with our car, asshole?"

And then one evening, about twenty minutes after Dean was due home, he heard it. 

The rumble of the Impala's engine. 

There was no mistaking that sound.

Sam had been pretending to research South American silver mines for Henry, but was in reality watching the clock. Ever since the accident, he had even more issues with Dean getting home from work late than he'd had before it happened.

That was something Dean didn't remember, but after the night he came home an hour late, having gone out for a few beers with Ron, he'd quickly learned.

He'd come home to find Sam in a flat out panic, pacing and clutching his phone almost hard enough to break the casing. "You've reached Dean's other, other phone" had stopped being funny after the fifteenth time he'd heard it, and if - _when_ Dean came home, Sam was going to make him change his voicemail. It was an old joke that was never going to be funny again.

"Where the hell have you been?" Sam demanded when Dean waltzed in as carefree as could be. "Do you know what time it is? What the fuck, Dean? Why didn't you answer your phone?"

His voice broke on that last, and Dean looked at him, startled. "I – I went out with Ron. We went for a couple of beers…" Dean trailed off, crossing the distance between them, kneeing Daisy out of the way. 

He caught hold of Sam's shoulders. "Sam, it's fine. My phone died this afternoon, and my only charger is here." Reaching down, he caught Sam's hand, prying the phone away, gently uncurling Sam's fingers from around it.

Dean tossed the phone on the coffee table and turned back to Sam. "Sam, I'm sorry. I didn't think – I'm sorry. Shit," he said, as Sam stared blankly back at him.

"Dean?" Sam swallowed. "Dean, are you – is that - I mean, are you okay?" Sam blinked, and there was Dean staring up at him, concern and contrition on his face. Sam smiled. "You're okay."

"Yeah, Sammy, I'm okay." He grabbed Sam's elbow and dragged him over to the couch, pushing him down to sit. 

Sam's knees kind of buckled and he folded none-too-gracefully down. He gave a watery chuckle. "Sorry, dude. I guess I freaked out a little bit."

"I guess you did, buddy. I'm sorry. I didn't realize…it's not just the accident, is it?"

Sam shook his head. "No, probably not." He didn't want to talk about it, to talk about all the times he'd lost Dean to more than a drink after work. Dean didn't need to know all that shit.

But after that night, Dean made it a point to either be home on time or to call if he was going to be late. He never forgot, either. He saw that Sam needed that, so he just did it without making a big deal out of it. 

And now Dean was late coming home, and Sam had been about to freak out, but the rumble of the Impala was in Sam's ears, vibrating in his chest. He got to his feet and stumbled to the kitchen door.

He yanked it open, and there they were - Dean and the car. Together. She gleamed in the late afternoon sun, every inch of her perfect, while Dean beamed at Sam through the driver's side window.

Sam stood rooted to the spot. He couldn't have moved if his life depended on it.

Dean scrambled out of the car, saying as he did, "Sorry, I'm sorry I'm late, Sammy." He turned to Sam and grinned proudly. "But look what I did."

[](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/382/110792)

Later, after Dean had dragged Sam down the porch steps and over to the car, after he'd shown Sam every single repair he'd made to the car with the air of someone handing Sam the moon and the stars, after all that, Dean kissed him.

Before, they hadn't kissed much, unless they were in bed. Sam liked kissing, and he knew Dean did, too, but Dean had always seemed to think it was too demonstrative, or something. If ever Sam kissed him out of the blue for no reason other than he felt like it, Dean would laugh uncomfortably, pat Sam on the shoulder, and quickly do something to gross Sam out.

It never worked – Sam had spent his whole life around Dean, and a well-timed belch or an unexpected glimpse of half-chewed food barely registered on his radar.

But at the same time, if Dean was uncomfortable kissing without the end goal of sex in sight, Sam was willing to let him get away with it. It never seemed worth the hassle to convince Dean that it wouldn't turn them into girls if they made out for the heck of it once in a while.

So for Dean to kiss Sam in the middle of the driveway for no apparent reason than that he felt like it was pretty fucking awesome.

Except, of course, Dean couldn't possibly know that. Sam considered him thoughtfully, and then pulled him into another kiss, this one meant to convey how happy Sam was that he and Dean were in this moment, right now, just the two of them, making out against the Impala.

Dean pulled back, a soft look on his face that Sam hadn't seen in far too long.

"Do you like it?" he asked, gesturing at the car. "Does she look like, um, Baby again?" Dean sounded unsure about the whole "baby" thing, like maybe he was being presumptuous. 

There was really no adequate answer to that question, so Sam just tightened his arms around Dean and nodded.

"I didn't think – I mean, I didn't know you'd been working on her." He peered down at Dean. "As a matter of fact, when have you been doing it?"

"Well," Dean said, a hint of mischief in his smile, "Ron's been giving me time on days when we have a light work load."

It was springtime – Sam knew there was no such thing as a light workday in construction during the spring. He frowned, and Dean pulled away.

"Okay, look. Ron knew how much it meant to you for me to fix the car." Dean shrugged. "I really didn't get it, Sammy. I mean, I hate to hurt your feelings, but I figured, hey, it's just a car."

He must have seen something on Sam's face, because he hurriedly added, "No, I mean, I know, you explained it to me, but I wasn't _feeling_ it, not really." He shrugged.

"But it meant something to you, and I figured the least I could do was give it at try."

There was no way Sam was going to find words for what that meant, so he didn't try.

He pulled Dean down into another kiss and tried to tell him that way.

*

"Hey, you know what's awesome? Besides my cooking skills?" Dean said as he put a bowl of Kraft macaroni down in front of Sam.

Sam grinned happily at his food. "No, what's awesome besides you?"

"You." Sam looked quickly over at Dean, surprised. "No, really. You've stopped looking at me with that tragic expression on your ugly mug. I really hated that look, Sammy. But your eyes aren't sad anymore." He smiled, a small, soft smile. It was a smile Sam hadn't seen since before the accident, but he recognized it. He saw it and knew it for what it was – his brother. Not Dean before, not Dean after, just _Dean._

"I'm glad," Dean added simply.

"Me, too," Sam said. 

"There's always gonna be things I don't remember, Sam. I can't help that. I'm damn sorry for it. I know it hurts you."

Sam was shaking his head before Dean finished talking. "No, no Dean. Don't be sorry. I'm not sorry. There are so many things, so many things that happened to you, to me, that I'm glad you don't remember. Things that hurt you. This –" he waved a hand between them. "This is good. I can keep the memories for you, Dean. For us. Do you trust me to do that?"

Dean stared at him, then laughed. "Yeah, Sammy, of course I do. I can trust you to do that." He paused, and then said, "As long as you let me keep looking out for your ass."

"Yeah, I think I can manage to do that," Sam said.

"Then we're good."

 

~fin~

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Хочешь, чтобы я забыл, как мы целовались?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2638595) by [Fotini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fotini/pseuds/Fotini), [risowator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/risowator/pseuds/risowator)




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